


DOCTRINI^IP 
GRACE -I . 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



^-^^h' 



Cliap. _W___ Copyright No. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The DOCTRINES o/' GRACE 



7he DOCTRINES of GRACE 



/ By 

JOHN WATSON, M.A., D.D. 

[\an y\.a c lar en) 



N 



VV 



O R K 



McCLURE, PHILLIPS ^ CO. 

M C M 



67773 



l-t&rK^ y of <Jonu 

OCT 29 1900 

CtpyrigHi antry 
SECOND COPY. 

Ot'>v«r«d to 

OROt^ DIVISION, 
NOV 16 19C0 



.ws 



Copyright, 1900, by 
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 



To the Memory of My 
Father^ a Faithful Ser- 
vant of Christ and the ^een. 



A T k'^hY. of the CHAPTERS 

Chapter Page 

1. The Grace of God i i 

II. Repentance 27 

III. Forgiveness 43 

IV. Regeneration . . . 61 

V. The Vicarious Sacrifice of JesuTs Christ . 79 

VI. The Sovereignty of Godi 101 

VII. Saving Faith 121 

WU\. Good Works 137 

IX. Sanctification 153 

X. The Perseverance of the Saints . . . • '71 

\Xl. The Holy Cathohc Church 187 

CTI. The Holy Ministry 225 

^ni. The Sacraments . . . . .. . . -255 

XIV. The Mercy of Future Punishment . . .275 



i:he GRACE of GOD 



I 

The GRACE of GOD 

IT was the mission of St. Paul to declare the 
gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 
to the nations, and none of his successors in 
this high office has spoken with such persuasive 
power. Any one differs from St. Paul at his 
intellectual peril, and every one rhay imitate him 
with spiritual profit. One therefore compares 
together the dominant note of the Apostle and 
of the modern preacher with interest, and one 
observes with concern that the characteristic 
modern strikes a lower key. St. Paul carried 
himself as an ambassador, charged with a com- 
mission by God and addressing subjects who had 
rebelled against their king; the preacher of to- 
day is rather a barrister pleading his case with an 
impartial and critical jury from whom he hopes 
to win a favorable verdict on Jesus Christ. The 
Apostle believed that he had received from God, 
by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, a divine 
message containing the terms of reconciliation 
and appealing to every man's conscience as a 
sinner; the modern has found in the religion of 
Jesus a reasonable discipline for the soul, and 
endeavors to convince his fellow-men of its 
excellent beauty. The Apostle was firmly con- 
vinced that if any man, Jew or Gentile, received 

[II] 



ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

his word and believed in Jesus Christ he would 
see the salvation of God, — such things as eye 
hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered 
into the heart of man — and that if he deliberately 
refused the obedience of Christ, he had missed 
the way of life everlasting. From the standpoint 
of our age there is possibly an advantage with 
the believing Christian; he has a wider vision 
and a more inspiring ideal ; there is certainly 
some disadvantage in being an unbeliever, he has 
denied himself the support of the most majestic 
of all religious traditions and the delicate enjoy- 
ment of the most graceful aesthetic emotions. 
The Apostle was intense, commanding, uncom- 
promising, and he preached with overwhelming 
authority ; the modern is diffident, suggestive, 
conciliatory, and he has no authority. 

When we ask how the most modest of men 
personally — did he not declare himself less than 
the least of all saints ? — and the most reverent 
of thinkers — did he not confess that the love of 
God passeth knowledge ? — carried himself with 
such confidence, the answer is to be found in 
his high idea of the Christian faith of which he 
was an Apostle. With him Christianity was not 
simply the most lofty of living faiths, as it has 
become the fashion of to-day to regard it, in our 
devotion to the study of comparative religion. 
St. Paul certainly had too generous a doctrine 
of God, and too profound a doctrine of humanity, 
to suppose that the nations had been left since 
the beginning with no light, and that their 
religions were only systems of devil worship. 
Not only was the faith of his fathers a distinct 

Li2] 



The GRACE of GOD 

revelation of the Eternal, but throughout the 
race there was diffused a knowledge of God and 
of righteousness sufficient to guide honest men 
in their life and conduct. Between Gentile re- 
ligions, however, and Christianity the difference 
was not in degree, but in nature. They were 
instructive and prophetic — the preparation for 
the final faith ; but they were natural, with no 
element in them which was not within the range 
of human attainment. Christianity has been 
throughout, as regards its historical facts, with- 
in the province of human life : and, as regards 
its organized action, Christianity must work 
through human agents; but Christianity, in its 
inherent force, is beyond the natural and has its 
source in God. It draws its strength from the 
eternal springs; its sanctions come from Deity; 
and when St. Paul invited men to hear and obey 
the Gospel, he stood upon the rock of ages, 
and he spoke against a background of the super- 
natural. 

With him the supernatural was not the mere 
idea of superior physical force — a matter of 
material miracles, to which indeed St. Paul 
attached no importance — but the nobler idea of 
constraining spiritual influence, on which he 
delighted to insist. St. Paul had an altogether 
persuasive and beautiful word for the super- 
natural, which he was never weary of using, and 
which the Church should count one of her chief 
treasures — the Grace of God. Supernatural is 
a scientific word, and moves in the sphere of the 
physical ; grace is a religious word, and moves 
in the sphere of the spiritual. As St. Paul con- 

[13] 



Ue DOCTRINES of GRACE 

ceived it in his sane religious imagination grace 
was the good-will of God which from past ages 
had rested on the human race as a purpose of 
salvation. As the thoughts of God are their own 
fulfilment, so that when He speaks it is done, 
this good-will is not only benevolence, it is also 
benefaction. Through the centuries before 
Christ it was made manifest in patient long- 
suffering towards sin and ignorance, in pro- 
gressive revelations of the Divine character, in 
evangelical promises which were embraced by 
believing souls, in visions of Messianic days full 
of hope and gladness, as well as in secret light, 
comfort, strength, and cleansing. During the 
centuries which have followed Christ the Grace 
of God, stored in the person of the Lord and 
administered by the Holy Ghost, has poured into 
human souls, through the preaching of the gospel, 
through the sacraments of the Lord's Supper 
and Baptism, through many providences of joy 
and sorrow, and through the mystical fellowship 
of the soul with God. It has been a long proces- 
sion of the divine riches — the very fulness of 
God passing through the avenue of the Incarna- 
tion into the life of the human race. 

St. Paul was accustomed to dwell with even 
more tender recollection upon the grace of God 
as that grace rested upon the individual. From 
eternity, as he imagined, the good-will of the 
Almighty had reached forward to a man who 
was not yet in being, and already it purposed 
great mercies for his soul. From the day of that 
man's birth the divine grace had pursued and 
encompassed him in the teaching of his mother 

[14] 



rhe GRACE of GOD 

and the example of his father, in the words of 
Scripture and in many deHverances of early 
years. One day that grace made a chief assault 
upon his soul, moving his conscience and his 
heart, leading him to repentance and to faith till 
that man became a new creature in Christ Jesus. 
From this birthday forward the same grace 
guided and instructed him, succored and sanc- 
tified him, kept him from falling and changed 
him into the very character of the Son of God. 
During hours of darkness and the straits of 
human sorrow that grace was his comfort and 
his strength, and was ever keeping his heart in 
the hope of life everlasting, and when at last 
this favored man, his last sin forgiven and his 
last fault removed, stands in the presence of 
God perfect, it will be to the praise and the glory 
of the divine grace. All that this man has ever 
known and all that he has ever done of good, all 
that he is in character and power, has come from 
the grace of God. So that without grace he is 
nothing, to grace he owes all. Such, according 
to St. Paul, was the magnificence and the fruit- 
fulness of the grace of God. 

Should it be the case that little to-day is heard 
of the sovereign and almighty grace of God, this 
is due not to its withdrawal nor to the slackening 
of its tides, but rather to new modes of thought 
and an atmosphere alien to the supernatural. 
Between the mental attitude of our fathers and 
our own there is a great difference wherein it is 
supposed that we have gained much in intelli- 
gence but wherein it is possible we have lost 
much in faith. According to our fathers the 

[15] 



ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

supernatural was very near to us, on every side, 
till perhaps their faith passed into creduHty and 
their reverence into superstition. They peopled 
the world with spirits till not only did the holy 
angels stand, as surely they did, near to the 
children of God, ministering to the heirs of sal- 
vation, but every awful or beautiful place in 
nature had its spirit of blessing or of danger. 
They heard voices that are not heard to-day, and 
received warnings to which we give no heed, and 
everywhere the unseen mixed itself with the 
seen, so that our fathers were the inhabitants of 
two worlds. It was easier in such a receptive 
state of mind to believe in God and to accept His 
constant and blessed intervention in human life. 
During our day the veil of mystery has been 
lifted and the frontiers of the supernatural 
driven back; we have been convinced by the 
arguments of physical science that nature 
through all her provinces is one, and that her 
laws are inflexible. It has been our endeavor 
to trace everything spiritual to a natural cause 
and to embrace within the visible universe all 
the mysteries of life. Is it wonderful that the 
impression has been left on men's minds that 
there is nothing real except that which is seen 
or can be discovered by the methods of science, 
and that the supernatural is a myth and an un- 
reality ? With this idea in the background of 
our minds we are not inclined to believe that God 
is ever acting on human souls and making Him- 
self known in human life, and therefore we have 
not only for the largest part ceased to believe 
in what is called the miraculous, meaning there- 

[i6] 



rhe GRACE of GOD 

by physical miracles, but we have also ceased to * 
believe in the nobler miraculous, the effects and 
evidence of the grace of God. We have for- 
gotten the goodwill of God because we have for- 
gotten that He is a Will. 

Should any person have been so saturated by 
the modern spirit that to him the idea of the 
divine intervention, even for the salvation of his 
soul, is incredible, then nothing can be more 
foolish or uncharitable than to scold and to de- 
nounce him, and especially nothing is more to be 
deprecated than offering to him, or rather forcing 
upon him, the brutal alternative between believ- 
ing in the supernatural or surrendering the ideal 
of a holy life. If any one be unable to believe in 
God as a personal and beneficent will and in 
Jesus Christ as the revelation of God and the 
Saviour of the world, then he is suffering an 
immense loss, but an austere ideal still stands 
out before his soul. He can still respect himself 
and still serve his fellow-men. He can still 
appreciate righteousness and fight the good 
fight against sin. He can still possess his soul 
in patience, and await with courage the unknown 
future. His models in the natural virtues are 
such as may well strengthen and inspire any one, 
for they are Socrates dying bravely with nothing 
but a plank to carry him across the great sea 
to the new world, and Marcus Aurelius sadly 
speculating regarding the origin and end of all 
things, but ever doing his duty bravely and 
carrying himself purely in the battle of life. His, 
however, is an incalculable deprivation and a 
dreary outlook, for his conception of life is so 

[17] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

much more hopeless than that which filled the 
heart of the Gentile Apostle with gladness, and 
touched all his life with a light that shone the 
more clearly when he was a chained prisoner and 
a candidate for martyrdom. 

What conception of life can be more cheerless 
than to think of it as a huge piece of machinery 
into which one is cast at birth as a sheaf of corn 
between the teeth of the threshing-mill, through 
whose revolving drums and whirling wheels one 
is carried from stage to stage for seventy years, 
and from which what remains is cast at death 
into an unknown and dark chamber? What dis- 
courages and shakes one in this severe idea of 
life is the hopelessness of repenting the past and 
regaining the years which have been lost. One 
has been caught in the hands of mighty law, and 
because one's father or one's great-grandfather 
has been a sinner, and because one in the days 
of his youth has sinned himself, then the sins of 
the far distant past are so entailed and fastened 
upon the will and heart that life can never escape 
from their malign influence, but must ever 
accomplish its predestination of evil. What 
availeth to fight when the issue is already 
settled ? and what availeth to tell me of the 
inflexible majesty and the unerring certainty of 
the moral laws when I myself am their victim 
and their illustration ? It is in such circum- 
stances that even the firmest and most con- 
vinced believer in the reign of law is visited 
with what may be only a devout imagination, 
but what every one must hope is also an instinct 
— the hope of help from without. 

[i8] 



ne GRACE of GOD 

Suppose that there be some other force in this 
spiritual creation than law, and that, indeed, law 
be not a force at all, but only the instrument 
by which a living will is working. Suppose that 
this will can assert itself — not by the subversion 
of law, but by a new application of law; not 
by ignoring any law, but by introducing some 
superior law. What one desires is that a spring- 
time should come to one's life when upon the 
waste ground which has been covered with 
obscene rubbish and is haunted with every evil 
thing, the birds of the air shall drop the good 
seed, and the showers of heaven water it, and 
the sunshine of heaven quicken it till the waste 
places be all carpeted with green grass which 
not only covers the evil of the past, but changes 
that very evil into flowers and fruit. When one 
looks upon his life as a foul and stagnant river 
which is running in the bottom of the channel 
and into which has poured the moral sewage of 
many years, he must pray at times, whatever he 
may believe, that a springtide of that great ocean 
from which the river came pure as a shower 
upon the mountain, and to which that river must 
return, would break through all barriers and rush 
up the unclean channel, filling it from bank to 
bank with pure and wholesome water in which 
the sediment of years will be changed and 
cleansed. This may be incredible, but this 
surely is to all men most desirable; and this 
really is the Pauline conception of the Grace 
of God. 

What, however, if this most enticing image of 
religion — a reinforcement from God — be only a 

[19] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

hope and a dream which filled the sensitive and 
mystic soul of St. Paul, but which has no reality 
in history or in life ? If the grace of God be a 
fact, and God has intervened, then there ought 
to be evidence of so great an affair which 
would convince any reasonable mind and afford 
a sound basis for faith. There is such an 
evidence, and it is really twofold, standing, first, 
in the person of Jesus Christ; and second, in 
Christian experience. It is a fact, and one about 
which there can be no doubt, that at a certain 
date in the history of the human race, and when 
the race was falling into moral decay, a man 
appeared in Palestine who bore no signs of evil 
heredity, and was impervious to His decadent 
environment. For about three years He lived 
in the full light of criticism and hostility, and 
during that time He so carried Himself in word 
and in deed amid all the circumstances of or- 
dinary human life, that not even His bitterest 
enemy was able to accuse Him of sin, and to 
this day His life remains the most perfect 
manifestation of spiritual grace. His influence 
also was so attractive and so irresistible that 
any sinful man or woman coming under its 
power, Mary Magdalene or Zacchseus, was lifted 
out of the former habit of sin and passed into 
a new atmosphere of virtue, and any person of 
high and pure character, a John or a Mary, rose 
to the full height of excellence, and his soul 
opened as a flower of spiritual beauty. As we 
now study the life of Jesus, examining His 
motives, hearing His words, watching His 
actions, it comes with conviction to our minds 

[20] 



7he GRACE of GOD 

that a new force has entered into human life 
and has begun to work unto salvation. With 
Christ as the Head and Spring, another race 
rises within the human race, like fresh blood 
coursing along the veins of a decrepit body, or 
like a healing process begun within the ravages 
of disease. There are now, if one may so say, 
two hereditary hnes, the old and the new; and 
one passing from the old escapes from the 
influence of the sin of himself and his fathers 
and enters into the spiritual atmosphere of 
Christ Jesus, so that old things pass away and 
all things are made new. As St. Paul journeyed 
from city to city of the Roman empire, then fall- 
ing into corruption, and preached the Evangel 
of the grace of God, amidst the moral ruins of 
cities so unspeakably corrupt as Corinth and 
Rome, little communities arose, not perfect yet 
in character and life, but not unworthy to be 
called by the name of saints. The same heredity 
has continued and asserted itself unto the present 
day, and is manifested beyond controversy as 
often as a man who has disobeyed and been 
punished by the eternal law of righteousness 
passes under the sway and enters into the, 
fellowship of Jesus Christ. Grace is therefore j 
not an imagination, however beautiful and fas- 1 
cinating, but it is an historical and objective fact! 
contained in the biography of Jesus, and repeated ' 
endlessly in human history for eighteen cen- \ 
turies. 

When one inquires whence Jesus came, and 
what is the unseen spring of His influence, then 
it is open for any person to say that He was 

[21] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

r simply an amazing phenomenon in ordinary life, 
and that His grace was simply an achievement 
, of pre-eminent character. This is, however, an 
explanation which does not meet the facts of 
the case, and places a strain upon reason which 
it can hardly bear. Since there never has been 
any parallel to this perfect sinlessness, and this 
immense influence, one is rather convinced that 
wherever Christ came from it was not from 
within the race in which He originated this 
new strain, seen alike in the Jewish and Roman 
world, and that however Christ exercises His 
constant power it is something more than the 
force of example now eighteen centuries dis- 
tant. Is it not the case that when one hears the 
Word of Jesus and considers His life, he dis- 
covers that the idea of God which is a part of 
the natural capital of his soul has suddenly been 
realized before his face, and that Jesus is at 
least the equivalent or spiritual value of God ? 
I He fulfils to our minds all that we have put into 
Ithe idea of God, so that beyond Him nothing 
^ivine can be imagined or desired. , Is it not, 
Hiherefore, reasonable to believe that when Jesus 
appeared in the midst of the human race, born 
of a woman, God Himself had intervened and 
the very grace of God had appeared and become 
a resident power in human history ? 

Our second evidence for the reality of the 
divine grace is the experience of the Christian 
Church, and by that phrase we mean the experi- 
ence of its different members, and especially of 
those who have made fullest trial of the Christ. 
Any one desiring certain information in a de- 

[22] 



The GRACE of GOD 

partment of study will naturally seek it from its 
experts, and it is worse than folly to seek our 
evidence of the matters of religion from the 
students of science or of philosophy. The sure 
witnesses in this highest department are the 
saints, the men who have overcome sin and have 
attained unto holiness ; and their testimony in 
all the ages regarding the influence which has 
redeemed their lives and made perfect their souls 
is constant and unhesitating. Whether we ask 
St. Paul or St. John, whether we ask St. Bernard 
or John Calvin, it matters not to what school of 
theolog}^ or to what ecclesiastical province the 
witness belongs, he has one reply to our question. 
If I am not to-day as other men, sinful and 
disobedient, if I have to-day a quiet conscience 
and a clean heart, if I have been able to do any 
good thing in the world, and to help any human 
being, it is not due to myself. This good has 
been due from beginning to end to the grace of 
God ; and if I ever attain unto the perfection of 
the heavenly kingdom, then to the same grace 
must be ascribed my achievement. This is the 
spirit of the prayers of the Christian Church 
and of her praise and of her theology and of her 
endeavors, and it is hardly to be believed that 
her experience of eighteen centuries has been one 
great delusion, and that in her own strength she 
has done those great marvels which she has 
always ascribed to the grace of God. 

One may even leave this historical evidence 
and venture upon an appeal to the heart of the 
ordinary man who is not utterly frivolous, and 
who has had some experience of life. Is it not 

[23] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the case that from time to time he reaHzes that 
an influence has been pleading with him, and 
restraining him, which was separate from books, 
even the Bible, and from friends, even the best, 
and that in any great event of his life, when he 
rose to his height and did that which before he 
had hardly believed possible, he was inspired and 
moved by a power that was from above ? Is not 
every faithful man also haunted with the fear 
lest he should suddenly be overcome by a fiery 
temptation, and in five minutes should wreck 
the whole of his past life, and not only his own 
life, but the concerns committed to his charge, 
so that the pulpit, or the law, or medicine, or 
commerce, be almost hopelessly disgraced by his 
fall ? It is in the moment of his unexpected 
achievement that a thoughtful man is most 
humble and reverent, for he knows this was the 
doing of God. It is in the hour of spiritual 
anxiety that a man hears with unspeakable 
thanksgiving of a power so vigorous and so 
strong that it can restrain him even when the 
currents of temptation are running at their 
fiercest, and it is with a sense of great relief 
that he commits himself in all modesty and sim- 
plicity of faith into His hands, Who is able to 
keep us from falling, and Whose grace, as it is 
alone the source of all goodness, is also the one 
hope of spiritual preservation. 



[24] 



REPENTANCE 



II 

REPENTANCE 

IT has been a convention in Christian thought 
to strike a telling contrast between the mis- 
sion of John the Baptist and the ministry of 
Jesus Christ, in which the mission is taken as 
temporary and the ministry as eternal ; but it is 
possible to carry this contrast to a dangerous ex- 
treme. Of course it goes without saying that 
in a historical sense John was simply the fore- 
runner of the Messiah, whose office was to close 
the prophetical succession and to herald the 
opening of the new dispensation. His was the 
voice of one crying in the wilderness, *' Prepare 
ye the way of the Lord " ; his was the figure of 
one preparing himself for the Lord. When the 
Messiah had come, and opened the Kingdom 
of God, the work of the Baptist was in appear- 
ance finished, and it only remained that this 
heroic servant should seal his selfless life by 
death — a martyr's death. After a spiritual 
sense, the message and service of the Baptist 
were not closed by the arrival of Jesus, and 
cannot cease till Jesus come the second time, 
without sin, unto salvation. Stripped of circum- 
stances, it is his high duty to awaken the con- 
science when religion has degenerated into 
hypocrisy and irreligion has grown into corrup- 

[27] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

tion, to make tender the heart that it be as 
spring soil, clean and open, for the good seed 
of the Evangel. His function in the work of 
grace must be to level down the swelling 
mountains of pride, and to fill up the dark val- 
leys of despair, that there may be a smooth road 
for the chariot of Christ; and so long as there 
is a sinful man to be saved John will meet him 
carrying the rod of the Law, that his hearer 
may be ready for the Gospel. First, John, with 
his camel's-hair garment and his leathern girdle, 
and then Jesus at the marriage feast; first the 
Prophet, with strong, merciless words, and then 
the gentle Galilean saying, " Come unto Me, all 
ye that labor and are heavy laden." A body- 
guard of graces attend the Saviour, among which 
are Faith and Forgiveness and Holiness, Peace 
and Joy, but the grace which cometh first in the 
order of religious experience is stern and strenu- 
ous, the grace of the broken and contrite heart. 
As we live in a day ,when this grace is very 
much a stranger, it is needful that we should 
identify her face, and make certain that godly 
sorrow is not a fancy of religious poetry. For 
that end, let the inquirer turn to the manuals 
of the soul and open what, after the Gospels, is 
the chief, not Augustine's Confessions, nor the 
Imitation of Christ, nor the Pilgrim's Progress, 
nor the Saint's Rest, although in each of those 
the mystery of the spiritual life is clearly set 
forth, but that book which is the heart of Old 
Testament Scripture. It is in the Psalms more 
than in any other place that we see the soul go 
out upon her '* dim and perilous way " in search 

[28] 



REPENTANCE 

of her home in God. Among the Psalms there 
are seven, certain of which St. Augustine had 
hung before his eyes as he lay a-dying, and 
which since the days of Origen have had a name 
and place of their own as the " Psalms of Peni- 
tence." As one reads the 6th, the 32d, the 
38th, the 51st, the I02d, the 130th, and the 
143d, with their profound sense of the guilt of 
sin, their fear of the Divine displeasure, their 
unselfish longing for God's mercy, their passion- 
ate prayers for cleansing, he recognizes the 
strength of Hebrew religion. Wherever the Old 
Testament saints failed, it was not in under- 
valuing sin. Whatever they did not know, they 
understood penitence. Their massive strength 
of faith, which was not tossed by every wind 
of opinion, and their majestic conceptions of 
God, Who was to them the Rock of Righteous- 
ness, were rooted and grounded in that bitter, 
wholesome sorrow for sin which is the condition 
and earnest of true reHgion. It will be an evil 
day, and a calamity to the life of the Church, 
when this virile instrument of worship — the very 
epic of righteousness — gives place to hymns 
charged with beautiful emotion, but as a rule 
so destitute of ethical force that one could hardly 
have imagined that the Ten Words of Moses 
had ever been written. 

It may be urged that this grace, in its pro- 
nounced and painful form, belongs to the period 
of the Law, and has no place under the Gospel ; 
that its home is under the awful shadow of 
Mount Sinai, and that it ought not to live in the 
sunshine of Calvary. The child of the new dis- 

[29] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

pensation is not a slave, but a son of God, who 
has been freely forgiven by the blood of Jesus, 
and is daily satisfied by His spirit. Unto him 
belong, as his birthright, the assurance of faith, 
the peace which passeth understanding, and the 
joy unspeakable, and not reproaches of con- 
science, and soreness of heart, and bitter humilia- 
tion. The agony of the Psalms does not befit 
those who have been brought near by the Cross 
of Jesus, and who stand complete in Him. This 
may be true, but it was not the experience of St. 
Paul, who was the champion of grace and the 
representative saint of the New Covenant. As 
he writes in his old age to his son Timothy, and 
exalts the gospel ministry, he is suddenly carried 
out of his course by an undercurrent of feeling, 
and magnifies the office of Christ, which is to 
save sinners, " of whom I am chief." This is 
one of the most impressive utterances in the his- 
tory of religion, whether you consider the writer 
or its date. He was not one who had played the 
fool in his youth before God and man, for he 
could declare that he had lived in good conscience 
all his days, by which St. Paul intended that so 
far as he saw light he had always followed it, 
and so far as he knew righteousness he had al- 
ways done it. His persecution of Christ in His 
disciples was only a pledge of his honesty and 
of his devotion to the will of God. It was this 
man of natural nobility and selfless character 
who, not in affected humility, but in absolute 
sincerity, wrote himself down as worse than the 
Philippian jailer and the evil livers of Corinth. 
Nor was St. Paul a recent convert, still ignorant 

[30] 



REPENTANCE 

of the mind of Christ, and young in grace, but 
one who for many years had been working out 
his salvation with fear and trembhng, and in 
whom the readers of his Hfe can trace the clear 
and convincing likeness of his Lord. With this 
career behind him, so stainless both as a Jew 
and as a Christian, the most honorable of Phari- 
sees, the most gracious of apostles, St. Paul for- 
gets his achievements and his attainments, and, 
when he instructs his son Timothy, remembers 
only his sin. As we catch this glimpse into the 
Apostle's heart, we begin to understand how St. 
Paul was able to enter into the mystery of 
Christ's sacrifice, and to realize the magnificence 
of the Divine Grace. According to his concep- 
tion of sin was his conception of salvation. 

Beside those passages of penitence, which 
soften the most majestic experiences of Bible re- 
ligion, may be placed certain of later days, not 
unworthy of this high companionship. Towards 
the end of his life, than which none has been 
seen more perfect outside the Gospels, St. Francis 
d'Assisi wept so much over his sins that he in- 
jured his eyesight; but he would listen to no 
remonstrance. " I would rather choose to lose 
the sight of the body than to repress those tears 
by which the interior eyes are purified that they 
may see God." As George Herbert lay a-dying 
he said, " I am sorry that I have nothing to 
present to my merciful God except sin and 
misery, but the first is pardoned, and a few hours 
will put a period to the latter." Francis Quarles, 
the author of the Emblems, expressed great 
sorrow for his sins ; and when it was told him 

[31] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

that his friends conceived that he did thereby 
much harm to himself, he answered, " They were 
not his friends that would not give him leave to 
repent." And Bunyan learned '' that none could 
enter into life but those who were in downright 
earnest, and unless they left the wicked world 
behind them, for here (in the narrow road) was 
only room for body and soul, but not for body 
and soul and sin." He writes, " I was more 
loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad, and 
I thought I was so in God's eyes too ... I 
thought none but the devil himself could equal 
me for inward wickedness and pollution." One 
of the ablest men of his time used to say of 
Erskine of Linlathen that he never thought of 
God but the thought of Mr. Erskine was not far 
away; yet Principal Shairp informs us that in 
this holy man's last years all who conversed 
intimately with him were struck with " his ever- 
deepening sense of sin and the personal way in 
which he took this home to himself." Penitence 
is no monopoly or penalty of the Bible believers ; 
it is one of the signs of true religion in every age. 
It is not the Pharisee, full of self-conceit and 
arrogance, who is nearest to perfection, but the 
penitent, despising and condemning himself, for 
the history of the Church shows that penitent is 
only another name for saint. 

As this fine grace is almost an anachronism in 
our day — a survival of an obsolete state of mind 
— it is also necessary to distinguish repentance 
"from its counterfeit, for all sorrow for sin is not 
unto life, but some is rather unto death. It 
happens often in life that a man flings the reins 

[32] 



REPENTANCE 

to passion and sins with a high hand in his 
youth. When years have come and gone, he 
awakes some day and calls himself a fool. The 
fruit has turned to ashes in his mouth, and the 
dregs of the cup are bitter. He wishes some 
one had warned him with strong words in his 
madness, and had restrained him by force. Had 
he been wiser then, he would have had a stronger 
body and a more honorable position now, and he 
could scourge himself for his blindness. This is 
bitter, gnawing regret, but it is not repentance. 

Another man of nobler mind is in despair 
because he has quarrelled with the eternal law, 
and has been worsted. " What need I speak ? " 
he says ; " I must bear as best I can, and there is 
an end of the matter; I have deserved what I 
am enduring." There is here a sense of law and 
a sense of guilt ; but this is not repentance, 
because there is in the man's mind no sense of 
God. Judas Iscariot broke his heart after his 
betrayal of Christ, and went out to die ; he 
certainly felt more than selfish regret. His soul 
was filled with bitterness for the injury to Christ, 
but he did not repent, because if he had repented, 
he had turned unto the Lord, and had been the 
greatest monument of Divine grace. Regret 
may be only selfishness ; remorse may be unbe- 
lief ; repentance forgets self and trusts in God. 
What distinguishes repentance from every other 
form of sorrow is this: if it lays us in the dust, 
it is at the foot of the Cross and the throne of 
God. 

It is necessary in our day to magnify this 
grace, because it has been depreciated, and is 

[33] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

often counted little less than a religious hysteric. 
Various contemporary influences militate against 
this state of mind, and, indeed, have almost 
driven it out of the religious consciousness. A 
certain school of modern literature has done 
much to lessen the sense of conscience amongst 
men, and has done so after a subtle and at- 
tractive fashion. We have been taught in our 
time by one influential teacher, v^hose delicate 
thought and perfect style v^e have all admired, 
that the human mind of man passes through 
two moods. One is the Jewish, austere, ascetic, 
legal, wherein a man is concerned with righteous- 
ness, with guilt, with punishment. The other is 
lighter and more gracious, and had its origin in 
Greece, wherein a man is conscious of beauty, 
and perfect, divine, harmonious living. It may 
be natural for some people to play the Hebrew, 
but in that case he will neither be a happy nor 
an attractive person. It is natural for others to 
play the Greek, and to call for a full and free 
life; and one, therefore, may have no sense of 
repentance, because he has entered into greater 
liberty, and has attained he thinks unto finer 
proportions in humanity. One also is haunted 
with the fear — but this must be said with great 
diffidence — that the evangelical type of religion 
in our day is not always meet for repentance. Is 
it not the case that the gospel has been preached 
very frequently on such unethical conditions, and 
with such dangerous liberality, that men have 
been moved not so much to repent of their sin as 
to grasp greedily at a cheap salvation ? They 
have not learned to despise themselves because 

[34] 



REPENTANCE 

they have come short, but they have learned to 
escape from punishment. The great preachers 
of the past used to lay much stress upon what 
was called in ancient theological language " law 
work." Richard Baxter and William Law first 
took men and women to Mount Sinai, and we 
are not prepared to say that they did not keep 
them too long under the shadow and sound of 
the awful Mount. It is just possible that some 
of their pupils tarried so long at Mount Sinai 
that they never escaped from the wilderness, 
and never saw the Land of Promise. It remains, 
however, a good thing either for a hard or for 
a shallow man, filled with selfishness and vanity, 
to stand before the black darkness, and to hear 
the thunder of the eternal law. It humbles his 
pride, and cleanses him from self-conceit, and 
this experience lays the foundation of a nobler 
and a stronger manhood. As all know who 
have read Bunyan's Grace Abounding, none are 
so ready to welcome the Cross of Christ as 
those who have passed through the discipline of 
law. When a man comes to realize his own 
entire unworthiness, and his ingrained bias to 
evil, he understands the greatness of Christ's 
achievement, and surrenders himself with more 
absolute faith into the hands of his Saviour. 

Whatever may be the reason, people are at 
any rate not much given to repentance to-day, 
and as a rule they are not at all ashamed of an 
unrepentant state of mind. They are apt to 
complain of Psalms written in a minor key of 
penitence, and refuse to sing hymns such as 
" Rock of Ages," where the sinner declares that 

[35] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

I 

; he is foul and has no hope of cleansing save 

I through the blood of Christ. What this person 

j ,says — and he is a representative modern — is 

this : ** I know the meaning of the English 
language, and I know the history of my own 
life. I am not going to tell lies at any time, and 
especially I wish to be truthful when I am 
worshipping God. I am not foul, and I am not 
going to say I am foul when I know that that 
would be a falsehood." This person is of course 
perfectly right in not singing songs of penitence 
when they would be a lie on his lips. There 
are undoubtedly a certain number of Psalms 
which ought not to be sung by a person who 
is proud and self-righteous, just as there are a 
certain number of hymns regarding the future 
state which ought not to be sung by any person 
who is absolutely satisfied with this present world 
and has no longing whatever for Jerusalem the 
golden. Undoubtedly there is a great amount 
of hypocrisy and unreal sentiment in the conven- 
tional praise of our public worship, and it would 
be a good thing if people were so affected by 
a sense of honesty and the fitness of things that 
they were silent when a congregation is declaring 
its penitence and they are not penitent, or a con- 
gregation is longing to be with the Lord and 
they are desiring only to be in their offices. At 
the same time it ought to be pointed out to 
that person that if he is entirely satisfied with 
his condition this is no ground for pride, but 
rather a ground for humility. 

Suppose that some one is practising an art, 
and you go into the room where the work is 

[36] 



REPENTANCE 

lying. You are shown the work, and as con- 
versation proceeds you discover that the artist 
considers that he has touched perfection. Draw- 
ing and coloring are, in his opinion, altogether 
right, and you cannot discover that this person 
is able to distinguish between his work and that 
of Raphael. You do not on that account admire 
that person, or consider that he is likely himself 
to be a great artist. You are rather convinced 
that he will never touch even the lowest levels 
of perfection, because he is utterly unconscious 
of his own imperfection. After the same fashion, 
if any one considers that he has written so well 
that criticism gives him no information and 
chastens no fault, then it is certain that he 
has done his best work, and his best work is 
extremely bad. We admit in the sphere of art 
and literature that the depreciation of one's own 
work and a sense of its deficiencies are conditions 
of success. And yet a cultured modern will 
consider himself superior to the saints of the past 
and their successors of to-day, because they sing 
the 51st Psalm and the *' Rock of Ages" with 
intense feeling and he has been raised above 
this experience. As a matter of fact this person 
is sealing his own doom and shutting himself 
out from the higher reaches of religion. A 
Pharisee is a very incomplete work of religion, 
and there are for him no future possibilities. 
You can finish a villa, such a villa as is erected 
by the modern builder, to the disgrace of the 
State and religion, within a few weeks, and it is 
not likely to last more than a few years. When 
we build a cathedral, nothing but the foundation 

[Z7] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

is seen for years, and it may be that centuries 
will pass before that cathedral is finished. When 
it is finished, it stands a monument of human art 
and industry, and will remain unto all ages and 
after miles of those miserable buildings have 
passed again into their kindred dust. This is 
the difference between the cheap and flimsy 
character of the Pharisee and the strong but 
slow growth of sainthood; and the foundations 
of sainthood are laid in the broken and contrite 
heart. 

Suppose, however, some person were to say, " I 
am not penitent, and I never have been penitent ; 
the atmosphere of the day does not encourage 
this grace, and all my efforts to obtain it have 
failed. Can I create penitence ? and is there any 
method by which a shallow, self-sufficient, self- 
righteous person can have his character deepened 
and his pride turned into humility ? " Surely, 
the first prescription is to turn to the Law of 
Moses, and it is an excellent arrangement by 
which the Ten Commandments are read every 
Sunday in a public congregation. Suppose a 
man take those commandments one by one, and, 
using each as a candle of the Lord, go into the 
holes and corners of his heart; suppose he sit 
down in quietness alone with his soul and say 
to himself in all honesty, '' Am I perfect by the 
first commandment, and by the second, by the 
third, and by the tenth ? " Suppose he take for 
a commentary on the commandments the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, and be not content until he be 
able to acquit himself not only because he has 
not done evil, but because he has not imagined 

[38] 



REPENTANCE 

evil, not only because his life is clean, but be- 
cause his thoughts are pure. The command- 
ments may not affect the conscience of some 
people, and they may be inclined to hold them- 
selves not guilty by the Ten Words of Moses. 
For this person it would be a good thing to take 
his life and to lay it alongside the life of our 
Saviour Jesus Christ, comparing how the Lord 
spake and how He carried Himself, with how 
we speak and how we carry ourselves. Perhaps 
the best thing that can be done with a person 
who is painting, and painting very badly, is not 
to criticise, and far less to be angry with him, 
but to place before him a masterpiece of the 
great age, and to leave the blunderer alone with 
perfection. If there be the faintest sense of 
art in him, this young painter will destroy all 
that he has done and will go away to begin in a 
better and more hopeful spirit because a humbler 
and more ambitious spirit. The impression of 
the- master's greatness will give to the pupil a 
sense of his own littleness ; and if it be hard for 
him to burn everything that he has done, yet one 
can encourage him with the hope that out of the 
fire will arise a new artist. The contrast between 
the life of our Master and our own is enough to 
humble even the most self-satisfied person, for 
although the linen of the Holy Table seems white 
when we hold it in our hands, it shows poorly 
beside the untrodden snow at the height of a 
great mountain. St. Peter was one of the most 
self-sufficient of men and almost impervious 
to criticism, and yet one day the vision of the 
bright excellency of his Master came strongly 

[39] 



7he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

upon him, and he saw in Jesus, with His peas- 
ant's raiment and His lowly habits of life, the 
very glory of God. Although there were times 
when Peter was prepared to advise the Master 
and to show Him His mistakes, that day he could 
only say, ** Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
man, O Lord." Should it happen that we re- 
main untouched by the Ten Words and by the 
life of the Holy Gospel, what else can be done 
for Pharisaic and religious pride ? One other 
remedy remains; and if that fail, there is no 
hope that we can ever attain unto the grace of 
penitence. Let us take our way to the Cross of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and there 
consider Him in His innocence and in His suf- 
ferings. If Christ living has not overcome the 
soul with a sense of His holiness and our sin- 
fulness, then maybe Christ's dying, with our sins 
wound round His head as a crown of thorns, 
with our sins piercing His hands and His feet 
as iron nails, may break the hardest heart and 
lay us in contrition at His feet. This humility 
is the beginning of salvation, for it is the con- 
dition and prophecy of forgiveness. The Christ 
before whom we lie in contriteness of heart has 
been raised up first on the Cross and then on the 
Throne, that with one hand He might give us 
repentance, and with the other the forgiveness 
of sins. 



[40] 



FORGIVENESS 



Ill 

FORGIVENESS 

TWO different men will take as different 
views of one of those picturesque fishing 
harbors which can be found along the 
north-east coast of Scotland and of England. 
An artist comes to the place in the glory of the 
summer, and to him the fishing village appeals 
on purely aesthetic grounds — on account of the 
little stream which has cut its way through the 
gray rocks, and on whose banks the little village 
is built ; the red tiles of the roofs of the weather- 
beaten cottages; the old-fashioned folk that 
gather upon the little quay; the boats, with their 
brown sails, coming home in the setting sun ; and 
the sea of the color of an emerald gently laving 
the feet of the iron cliffs. This is to him a 
fetching bit of scenery, and in the winter-time 
he transfers it to canvas; next spring it is hung 
upon the walls of the Academy, and is admired 
by city folk living in safety and at their ease. 
But neither he nor they understand. Should 
you wish to know the value of the break in the 
cHffs and the shelter of the harbor, you had better 
ask a fisherman, and ask him during the black 
winter months. This man has seen the storm 
coming when far out at sea, and lifted his nets 
without delay. He has run for home before the 

[43] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

wind, and through the waves has made for the 
harbor h'ghts. His wife and children have been 
watching on the quay, which is now swept with 
spray, and their hearts stand still as his boat 
comes near the entrance between two jagged 
rocks. As the boat flashes through the water 
and comes out on the harbor side, the men lay 
down their oars and lie back upon their seats. 
As the boat comes up to the side of the quay, 
hands are stretched out to bid them welcome, and 
hearts are lifted in thankfulness to God because 
they have escaped from the perils of the sea. On 
such a night men and women understand the 
value of the harbor as no artist can, who paints 
it in its peace, and no crowd of inland people, 
who admire it for its red and blue. To the one 
it is a picturesque piece of scenery; to the other 
it is a hiding-place from the storm. 

After the same fashion one can take two views 
of the Bible, and each of them has its own value. 
It is impossible that any cultured person should 
be indifferent to the Scriptures of the Old and 
New Testament as a noble literature, or fail to 
admire their unique grandeur of style, their 
magnificent imagery, the glowing spirit of their 
hope, and the elevation of their moral teaching. 
Among all the masterpieces of literature the 
Bible must take the first place, beside which the 
achievements of poets and philosophers pale and 
are put to shame. One, however, realizes that 
admiration for the literary qualities of the Bible 
is doing poor justice to the inherent power and 
the spiritual attraction of the Book. The best 
witness to the service of this Book is not a man 

[44] 



FORGIVENESS 

of letters, but a sinner who has been saved. He 
who has been at sea and has been tossed to and 
fro in the darkness, who has seen the distant 
lights and rested not until he had passed into the 
shelter, alone can testify to the strength and 
comfort of the Bible. It is the forgiven penitent 
that can bear the clearest evidence to the Book, 
for among its chief messages is the promise of 
forgiveness. 

There may be a few people who have never 
felt the w^ant of forgiveness, and to whom the 
word itself has a strange sound, but the desire 
is surely indigenous in the human race, and any 
exception does not prove a stronger or finer 
character. Should one have had the misfortune 
to offend a friend, and so to wound his heart 
that intercourse has ceased between the two, then 
it argues a low state of mind, or an incredible 
frivolity, that the offender should never miss his 
friend's company, and should never regret his 
friend's alienation. Any person with a trace of 
nobility will consider this quarrel to have been 
the chief misfortune of his Hfe, and will ever 
entertain an earnest hope that the way be opened 
up for reconciliation. He will surely count it 
a chief day in his life when he has been assured 
that his friend forgives him, and they return to 
the relations of former years. Should this be 
true of human fellowship, how much more true 
must it be of the communion between the soul 
and God. And unless it be that a person is able 
to say that he has never sinned, and therefore 
has no need of forgiveness, he must be callous 
to the last degree who has not longed to be as- 

[45] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

sured that his sins have been forgiven of God, 
and that there is no cloud between him and his 
Father. 

It ought, however, to be said that the sense 
of sin, and therefore the desire for forgiveness, 
varies in different ages, since there is a fashion 
in religion as there is a fashion in books, and 
clothes, and manners, as there is also a fashion 
in science. As each age has its own particular 
sins, so each age has its own particular penitence. 
It has been unfortunate that in religious litera- 
ture conviction of sin has been represented in a 
form so stereotyped, and that no one is supposed 
to be penitent unless he is penitent after the 
convention of the day. For instance, there are 
those who realize that in sinning against God 
they have broken the eternal law of righteousness 
which runs throughout their life in this world, 
and which will run throughout their life in the 
world which is to come. They realize themselves 
to be like a person who had violated the law of 
the Roman Empire, and who was liable at any 
moment to be arrested. It mattered not whether 
he went to Rome, or to Corinth, or to Jerusalem, 
or to the ends of the civilized world, he was still 
within the reach of Rome, and from Rome could 
never escape. For him there was nothing but 
hiding and fleeing, but hide and flee as he 
pleased, some day he would be brought across 
sea and land to stand before Caesar's judgment 
seat.. Nothing can affect the imagination more 
powerfully than a sense of outlawry, the hope- 
less contest with almighty and omnipresent law, 
in whose hands we are utterly helpless, from 

[46] 



FORGIVENESS 

which we have no appeal. This sense of out- 
lawry reaches its highest degree when any one 
is convinced that he has sinned against the law 
which extends through all worlds, and which is 
absolutely unerring. Is it cowardice in him that 
he should be afraid, or that he should earnestly 
desire a settlement ? and is that an unworthy 
form of religion that one would seek in every 
direction for some means by which this great 
quarrel be healed and peace be made between 
the soul and the eternal righteousness ? 

Another man may never have thought of his 
relation to law, but he may be much concerned 
with his relation to himself, being overwhelmed, 
not with the thought that he has broken God's 
commandments, but with the thought that he 
has stained his own soul. His soul, through sin 
has become to him something loathsome and 
horrible, like unto the skin of a leper when his 
disease is white upon him, like unto pure snow 
upon which some loathsome black liquid has 
been poured. What he desires is not so much 
reconciliation with God as reconciliation with 
himself, not to be saved from the fear of punish- 
ment, but to be saved from the agony of self- 
humiliation. And still another man may have 
been affected not so much by the guilt of sin, 
or by its corruption, as by its outrageous dis- 
loyalty and ingratitude. From early days he 
has been accustomed to think of God as his 
heavenly Father, and has not been indifferent to 
the innumerable mercies of God. He suddenly 
awakens to the fact that his return for this 
unwearied care and divine patience, wherein God 

[47] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

has pitied him as a father pitieth his children, 
has been forgetfulness, and disobedience, and 
selfishness, and unspirituality. It is as if he had 
wounded his nearest and dearest, and had done 
so in wanton carelessness and without a feeling 
of penitence. What the first man desires is to 
be reconciled to law; what the second desires 
is to be reconciled to himself; what the third 
desires is to be reconciled to his Father; and in 
every case the heart is longing for forgiveness, 
and for every case provision is made in the for- 
giveness of God. 

When one turns from the human to the divine 
side of forgiveness, one learns from Holy Script- 
ure not only that God forgives sin, but that in 
forgiving sin He acts in a perfectly God-like 
fashion. Nowhere i's it taught that He will 
make any bargain with the sinner and loose the 
burden of sin on condition of receiving a gift 
or compensation from the sinner. Although the 
human heart has been apt unconsciously to 
imagine conditions, and has vainly tried to offer 
some recompense to God, no man would so deal 
with his offending brother as he imagines God 
would deal with him. When one of us is pre- 
pared to forgive, he always forgives freely ; when 
one of us asks another's forgiveness, he always 
expects a free forgiveness. It were little short 
of insult that one should approach his neighbor 
whom he had offended, and offer him this or that 
compensation in the hope that he would then 
forgive. It is enough that one should be penitent 
to earn forgiveness from any friend worthy of the 
name. It is worthy of that friend to grant the 

[48] 



FORGIVENESS 

forgiveness without conditions. What may be 
rendered unto him by the forgiven offender in 
after years is another matter: it will be given 
freely, as forgiveness was granted freely. When 
the two debtors stood before their creditor in the 
parable, and neither could pay, the one owing 
five hundred pence and the other fifty, their 
creditor forgave them, or, as it might read, 
graced them both, without money and without 
price. 

When the hope is held out in Holy Scripture 
that God will not only forgive, but is also pre- 
pared to forget our sins, the promise takes us 
deeper into the heart of forgiveness. One can 
understand how a person should forgive; it is 
difficult to understand how he can forget. For- 
giveness depends upon the will, but forgetful- 
ness is beyond our power. If anything can be 
forgotten, it must be through being replaced. 
If an incident can be covered over by another 
incident, so that the one sinks and fades into the 
other, then the former is not only removed from 
sight, but it is removed also from the mind. 
So long as the son remained in the far country, 
his departure, with its insolence and ingratitude 
and foolishness, could not be forgotten. When 
he returned to his father, in penitence of temper 
and lowliness of faith, the return removed the 
departure from his father's mind, so that as 
often as his eyes fell upon his son he saw him 
not as he went out, but as he came home. Is 
it not also the case that when God forgives our 
sins. He forgives us in Christ Jesus, beholding 
not the sinner that was, but the saint who is 

[49] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

to be, so that when he thinks of the Apostle, He 
remembers not Saul the persecutor, but only sees 
Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ. 

One can never be satisfied with forgiveness 
unless it should be accompanied by forgetfulness, 
and there are times when one longs for a yet 
further but perhaps impossible blessing, that sin 
should not only be forgiven and forgotten, but 
that sin should be utterly removed and pass out 
of existence. Although sin be forgiven, and 
although God has cast it, to use Scripture 
imagery, behind His back and into the depths 
of the sea, it yet exists, and some day may 
appear. It requires not that our enemy should 
dredge the sea for it, and should bring it up 
against us through pure malice, for sin has an 
unholy power of vitality, and might any day 
face us, if not in our lives, in the lives of others 
whom we have injured. Every word which we 
have spoken is immortal, as well as every deed 
which we have done, and in ages to come both 
may arise and call us cursed. Is there no 
power which shall not only loose sin from our 
conscience, but also bring- it to an end in our 
life ? Here we come upon that marvellous word 
that sin shall be blotted out, and we enter still 
farther into the mystery of this grace. We 
cannot understand what may be included in the 
idea, nor can we understand fully the power 
which will carry it into effect, but we may 
believe that in the long processes of grace the 
ravages of sin will be so repaired that what was 
evil will turn to good, and out of immense 
wrong-doing blessing wnll be brought to ourselves 

[50] 



FORGIVENESS 

and to our fellow-men. St. Paul's persecution 
of Stephen not only gave Stephen a quicker 
crown of martyrdom, but also taught St. Paul 
devotion and humility all the days of his life, 
so that it may be said that St. Stephen was the 
spiritual father of St. Paul, and through St. Paul 
St. Stephen wrought unto the salvation of the 
world. Mary Magdalene had not shown that 
spiritual devotion to the Lord which has secured 
her the affection of Christ's disciples in all ages 
had she not first wasted her passion, and been 
dragged in the mire. It was her grateful sense 
of the salvation of Jesus that kept her, not for 
a brief space, but for all her life, at the feet of 
her Lord. It is impossible to believe that sin 
can last for ever, for sin is negative and passing : 
good only is positive and lasting. The very 
crown of forgiveness will be the destruction of 
sin, when the worst sinner shall be able to look 
round the spiritual universe and see no trace of 
the evil which he has done, because it has been 
absorbed and changed into goodness. 

We also gather from the Scriptures of the 
New Testament that the forgiveness of sins is 
connected in some way with the life and death 
and resurrection and endless intercession of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. It is a natural question to 
ask why our heavenly Father should not simply 
say, " I forgive," and why it was necessary, as it 
appears to have been, that His beloved Son 
should endure the humility of the incarnation, 
and offer that immense sacrifice of the Cross 
in order that the stream of forgiveness should 
run free and full, without barrier and without 

,[Si] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

hindrance. Any complete answer to this ques- 
tion would have to sound the deepest mysteries of 
the spiritual life, and could only be given by one 
who has completely understood the relation of 
God to the law of righteousness and the action 
of the law of righteousness upon the spiritual 
life of the soul. Some things, however, are 
within our vision and within our understanding, 
and they throw a very suggestive light upon 
the relation of the doctrine of the forgiveness of 
sins to the doctrine of the vicarious sacrifice of 
Christ. This is without doubt an ethical uni- 
verse in which we live, and by that we mean 
not only that there is such a thing as good and 
such a thing as evil, but that good is bound to 
be blessed and evil is bound to be punished. 
No doubt the idea which some people have 
imagined of the Eternal is virtually an extremely 
good-natured but very weakly father, who cannot 
find it in his heart to punish anybody and who 
is feared by nobody. This is not the Scriptural 
doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, and this is 
not the likeness of the God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. Were it so, there had been 
no misery in the far country ; and were it so, 
there had been no joy in the Father's House. 
Any earthly father who treats his family after 
this slack and unbecoming fashion will rear 
wastrels and prodigals, and the day will surely 
come when his sons will lift up their hands not 
to bless but to denounce him. One of the chief 
blessings in human experience is a father who 
has been not only loving and merciful, but also 
severe and faithful. It were indeed a calamity 

[52] 



FORGIVENESS 

if the Father of our souls were only a greater 
and more foolish Eli, who cannot distinguish 
between saints and sinners, and who treats the 
sinner exactly as he would treat the saint. This 
world would not be worth living in for a week if 
there were not a righteous God upon the throne 
of the universe. Sin then would obtain the 
upper hand and righteousness be put to ever- 
lasting confusion in the market place. The 
great judgments upon iniquity would come to 
an end, and when they ceased human life would 
be a synonym for injustice and corruption. 
These judgments have cleansed life and have 
filled the hearts of the righteous with hope. 
What a blessing were the fire and brimstone of 
Sodom and Gomorrah, whose warning casts its 
wholesome shadow over Hebrew history! What 
a blessing the French Revolution was when the 
infamous tyranny and callousness of the rich 
and powerful were punished in blood ! What a 
blessing the righteous judgments of God upon 
evil cities and decadent countries have been in 
all ages of human history ! The progress of 
the human race has depended upon the severe 
action of the moral laws which have delivered 
righteous men and have been the enemies to all 
unrighteousness. License to sin and immunity 
from the punishment of sin are not God's gov- 
ernment, and are not the illustration but the con- 
tradiction of love. When we see that terrible 
judgments are intended to cleanse the world and 
to save nations, when none of us is accustomed 
to condemn or would on any account reverse this 
action, we begin to understand that the agony 

[53] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross 
of Calvary may fall in with the system of moral 
government. Were the sin of the soul loosed 
without pain and without cost, then God's deal- 
ings with the individual would be on another 
principle from His dealings with the race. 

Again, when a man asks for forgiveness, his 
own conscience comes into play, and he is not 
willing to be forgiven in a light and careless 
fashion. He desires to have his case settled 
according to the principles of righteousness ; and 
if he is to be set free, to have the sanction of 
the eternal law. If I have a quarrel with a 
moral law, let that quarrel be fairly fought out 
and settled, so that I may look the law in the 
face, and have this law on my side for ever. 
Let me come in by the front door when I return 
to my Father's house, with all the servants to 
bid me welcome, and not creep in by some back 
entrance as a tolerated criminal. Were a crim- 
inal to be dismissed from a court simply because 
the judge was too sentimental to punish him, then 
the judge would be instantly removed from the 
bench, who had let loose guilty and impenitent 
criminals upon society ; and the criminal himself, 
if there were any sense of rightness in him, would 
leave the court unsatisfied and ashamed. It is 
not in this easy way that the problem of sin can 
be settled and the relation of the sinner to the 
moral world adjusted. Conscience demands that 
law shall be honored and vindicated even when 
the vindication must be at one's own cost, and 
conscience is a competent commentator upon the 
meaning of Christ's sufferings. When I see my 

[54] 



FORGIVENESS 

Elder Brother leave the Father's house and all 
its peace and come into this life with all its sin 
in order to take on Him the burden of my guilt 
and the punishment of my sin, and when I see 
Him fulfilling the demands of righteousness and 
expiating upon the largest scale its penalty, then 
I also can see Him take the moral laws of the 
universe and write them in letters of gold upon 
the sky. If they were once broken, they have 
now been glorified; and if they insisted on their 
just rights, they have now received them in His 
Cross and Passion, and as I behold this im- 
mense sacrifice, I can see dimly, no doubt, but 
quite certainly, that upon this ground the eternal 
Judge may lessen my liability not to righteous- 
ness but to punishment, and in speaking forgive- 
ness to me can give rest to the conscience within 
my heart. 

Against this doctrine of forgiveness in its un- 
restrained freeness and its vicarious reference, it 
might be alleged that if forgiveness is to be given 
after this fashion to every man that asks it from 
a broken heart, the end will not be righteousness, 
but unrighteousness. If one be so lightly loosed 
from the penalty of his sins, and especially if this 
same penalty be laid upon another, then the for- 
given person will argue, " I am forgiven, and I 
am free to sin, and however I sin I shall not be 
punished " ; and so because grace has abounded 
sin will much more abound. This is in its own 
way logical, and sounds reasonable, but, fortu- 
nately for the dignity of human nature, life is not 
ruled by logic, and men are not always so bad as 
by logic they ought to be. If any one indeed 

[55] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

does argue along this line, then it may fairly be 
presumed that he has never been forgiven. He 
is not in the state of mind upon which forgiveness 
depends, he is in the state of mind for which 
there is no forgiveness. He is not in the Chris- 
tian state, " in Christ Jesus," he is in a state of 
unblushing and calculating selfishness. If any 
one imagines that he can so play fast and loose 
with the eternal law and ever run when he is 
in danger behind the Cross of Christ as to a city 
of refuge, then he will discover that the Cross 
will itself be the strictest of all laws and Christ 
the most merciless of all judges. If any man 
be certain of condemnation in this world and in 
the one to come, it is the man who proposes to 
make the sufferings of Christ the shelter of his 
own sins and the Son of God the servant of 
iniquity. With the vast majority of people for- 
giveness will not lead to a bad life, it will be the 
certain beginning of the best life, and that be- 
cause we are men made in God's own image, 
however the image may have been defiled, and 
because after all we are not liars and not cowards. 
Out of a hundred men who have been forgiven 
by their fellow-men under circumstances of great 
generosity there may be one who afterwards will 
lift up his hand against his benefactor and will 
trade upon his clemency, but we do not judge the 
race by one scoundrel out of a hundred, and it 
is fair to consider that man to be a slander upon 
human nature. Should you wish to make the 
other ninety and nine hate the sin wherewith 
they sinned and bind them to their benefactor 
in gratitude for all the years to come, this 

[56] 



FORGIVENESS 

will be best accomplished by their forgiveness. 
Whatever sins they may afterwards commit they 
will never wantonly insult the mercy which has 
been so ready and so unbounded. Within the 
lowest forms of human nature there remains an 
inherent nobility and susceptibility to gratitude, 
and to that the mercy of God has appealed and 
has not appealed in vain. 

The idea that free forgiveness leads to unholy 
living has been contradicted by history from 
end to end. The theology- of Jesus's day w^as 
accustomed to deal out forgiveness in exchange 
for certain works, and the result w^as hypocrisy 
of life and hardness of heart. Jesus used to say, 
" Thy sins be forgiven, go in peace," to people 
who had sinned desperately, and the result w^as 
holiness. The Roman philosophers laid down 
laws of good living and severe conditions of life, 
and the end thereof was the astounding corrup- 
tion of Roman society ; St. Paul went everywhere 
preaching the grace of God, and the result thereof 
was the salvation of a decadent world. Tetzel at 
the Reformation beat his drum in the market 
place and sold the forgiveness of sins for money, 
and owing to the work of such men religious 
society had become rotten to the core and was 
nigh to destruction; Luther declared that faith 
obtained mercy without terms, and the Refor- 
mation was as much a reformation of morals as it 
was of doctrine. In our day there are two schools 
of preaching divided by a clear line. One says, 
Cultivate your character and repair your faults 
and discharge the charities of life and aim at 
ideal ends. The other school says, You are a 

[57] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

sinner, and have been beaten in the great spiritual 
conflict. God in Christ forgives the guilt of 
your sin and bids you go in peace. Live from 
that point forward not as the slave of the law, 
but as its servant for love's sake. Which school 
has been associated with the great revivals of 
religion, wdiich school has fostered the deeper 
piety, which school has swept everything before 
it when its doctrine has been preached by a man 
of Christian compassion and stalwart faith ? 

Forgiveness has never been lightly bestowed 
because forgiveness is never bestowed alone. 
Before forgiveness repentance travels and ever 
afterwards repentance is the handmaid of mercy. 
With forgiveness comes holiness, and holiness is 
the only certain evidence of forgiveness. No 
man ever obtains forgiveness except at one place 
— before the cross of Christ — no man can ever 
verify forgiveness except in one place — within 
his own heart. No one is ready for forgiveness 
who has not repented, no one has received for- 
giveness who is not being sanctified. 



[58] 



REGENERATION 



IV 

REGENERATION 

JOHN FOSTER, one of the most virile of 
religious thinkers, and one of the most sug- 
gestive of essayists, had a great aversion to 
certain forms of expression which were 
much in vogue amongst some pious people of his 
day, and declared that, if possible, he would ex- 
punge them from every book by Act of Parlia- 
ment, and often said, " We want to put a new 
face upon things." Many would agree with 
Foster, for they believe that in our age the cause 
of faith v/ould be much served if the hackneyed 
terms of religion were gathered together and 
cast into the depths of the sea. Religious phrases 
remind one of those banknotes which the traveller 
receives in Scotland, and which he handles with 
much reserve. No doubt they were once new, 
and then, it is to be presumed, they were clean 
and crisp, but after they have passed through 
many hands, some very greasy and unsavory, the 
writing becomes illegible, and the notes them- 
selves have an evil smell. Once a phrase was 
the symbol for a spiritual reality, and it was used 
in burning sincerity by good men. By-and-by 
the multitude got hold of it, and misapplied and 
vulgarized the noble words until they ceased to 
have force, and clever writers, anxious to point 

[6i] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

their gibe at the party of piety, found their op- 
portunity. Lord Clarendon, the Royahst his- 
torian of the Civil War, makes himself merry 
about the Puritan phrase " seeking God," yet 
could anything be more worthy of a human 
being than to embark upon this quest and to 
agonize until heaven had been taken by storm ? 
What, however, worked in Clarendon's mind, 
and is ever in the minds of the satirists of re- 
ligion, was the hypocrisy of men to whom God 
had long ceased to be the portion of their heart, 
and had become simply a catchword of common 
speech. When a phrase is new, it is certain to 
be real ; when it grows old, it is apt to sink into 
cant. It is, however, to be remembered that 
although our banknote be worn so thin that it 
hardly holds together, and is so soiled that we 
hesitate to touch it, that bit of paper still retains 
a definite value, and, if you go into things, it 
still represents the same amount of gold. When 
one comes on a phrase in religious literature, and 
when one finds it largely in use amongst re- 
ligious people, however abused that phrase may 
be, or however distasteful to our refinement, let 
him be sure that phrase stands for a fact. 
Human souls have, one day, seen this, felt this, 
wanted this, or else they had not coined this 
term, and it had not been freely circulated. In 
proportion to their commonness, the words of 
religion are an evidence of the facts of religion. 
Take, for instance, the word " regeneration," 
or what is often (although inaccurately) con- 
sidered its synonym, " conversion." We have 
heard people divided into converted and un- 
[62 I 



REGENERATION 

converted, and we have resented the arrogance 
of the preacher who dared to make this deep-cut 
distinction between a mass of human beings, 
some of whom might be very good, a few of 
whom might be very bad, but the most of 
whom, as we said, with a fine consciousness of 
insight, were half and between. We may have 
been asked ourselves whether we were converted, 
and we were angry because a frail and, perhaps, 
foolish brother man had sought to lift the veil 
from the holy of holies in our souls, and to enter 
with obtrusive foot. This, however, does not 
touch the point, which is that there must be 
such an experience in religion, or else the word 
would not have come into existence, and that 
the experience is of elemental importance. As 
a matter of fact, this word describes with perfect 
accuracy one of the deepest and truest, one of 
the most lasting and fruitful events in the history 
of the soul. What one has to do is to exchange 
the worn-out paper for the precious gold, or, to 
vary the illustration, to mark where the float 
is dancing on the surface of the water, and to 
search below in the depths for the hidden 
treasure. 

When one speaks about regeneration, and 
speaks about it as if it were the same thing as 
conversion, it is necessary to make a distinction 
in the interests of theology, which is the ordered 
science of religion. Any one reading the Puritan 
divines of the seventeenth century, and their 
pupils of our own time, will be apt to discover 
that they used the two words as interchangeable, 
and, in so doing, they confused the two sides of 

I63] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

one great event. Regeneration, and here I 
substantially quote from Aubrey Moore, who 
was too soon lost to theology and the Church 
on earth, is really God's act as much as is 
creation ; conversion implies a conscious act of 
responsibility as we are enabled by God's grace. 
You cannot tell a man to be born again, you can 
tell him to turn round: being born again he is 
able to turn round. The man himself does not 
know when he is born again: he knows when 
the change in his life begins. Conversion proves 
regeneration: regeneration enables conversion. 
Regeneration is once, and never again : con- 
version may have a definite and marked be- 
ginning; it may also be repeated. Every great 
moment in sanctification may be called a con- 
version, and, therefore, Jesus said to Nicodemus 
that he m.ust be born again, but commanded 
Peter that when he was converted he should 
strengthen the brethren. Conversion, therefore, 
is the human side of regeneration, and it is in 
the sense of conversion that we are now treating 
regeneration. 

It is always a recommendation of a Christian 
doctrine that it should not merely be a theory 
of the schools, but that it should embody a desire 
of the human heart and an experience of the 
human life, and, upon the face of it, regenera- 
tion is one of the most fascinating and fondest 
ideals that ever has presented itself to our minds. 
It is not to be supposed that Nicodemus in his 
interview with Jesus was so utterly foolish as to 
confound the physical birth of a child with the 
spiritual birth of a soul. When he spoke of a 

[64] 



REGENERATION 

man becoming a child and entering again into 
his mother's womb, he was stating in hgurative 
terms the immense difficuhy of spiritual regenera- 
tion. It was, to his mind, as incredible, this 
spiritual rebirth, as would be a physical rebirth, 
but in expressing his increduhty he revealed 
the longing of his heart. One is convinced, as 
he speaks, that in quiet hours this Jewish rabbi 
realized the weariness of his outworn faith, and 
rebelled against the bonds of Pharisaic custom. 
Beside Jesus, as he had seen the Master preach- 
ing in the Temple, he was condemned, because 
Jesus saw the things which he had not eyes to 
see, and heard the things which he had not ears 
to hear. Beside Jesus he was blind and deaf, 
he was decrepit and ready to die. If it were 
only possible that a man, tired of his creed and 
tired of his habits, could begin life again as a 
young child, full of wonder and full of love! 
This was the fond dream of Nicodemus's heart, 
but how could it ever come to pass that this 
blase Hebrew scholar would become like one 
of the young children who sang in the Temple 
choir. Is not this a natural and pathetic desire 
which visits various kinds of men in their best 
hours, and which floats before them like a 
vision of the fairy world ? When a young man 
holds in his arms a little child, and looks upon 
its smiling, innocent face, there come up before 
his mind the sins of the past and put him to 
secret confusion. If he only could be washed 
clean again, not only from the stain of sin but 
from its insidious power, not only from that, but 
also from its very recollection ! if he only were 

[65] 



ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

a child again ! When an old man lays his hand 
upon the head of his grandchild, and hears the 
child talk with simple faith of God and of 
heaven, then he bitterly regrets the worldliness 
and sordidness of his soul, and would give 
much to have that child's fresh outlook upon 
this world which is, and the world which is to 
come. With both, the young man and the old 
man, the desire is the same, to begin again a 
new, fresh, hopeful life. The action of degen- 
eration we have too sadly learned in our own 
souls : our desire, whether we confess it or not, 
is for regeneration, and therefore the Christian 
doctrine of rebirth is one of the most spiritual 
aspirations of the human heart. 

Nor is this word less acceptable because it is 
so thorough, since regeneration is never to be 
confounded with reformation. The former is 
used of the spiritual world, the latter of the 
moral. The former has to do with the soul, 
where are the springs of life, the latter has to 
do with conduct, which is only a form of life. 
In regeneration the old vessel is not repaired and 
repainted, it is rather remelted and remoulded, 
and the necessity for this entire and unflinching 
process lies in the constitution of human nature. 
No change is worth the name which begins from 
without and works inward; every change which 
is to accomplish a perfect result must begin 
within and work outward. Behind a man's 
speech lie his thoughts, and behind his thoughts 
lies his mind, which is the man himself. Each 
individual has his own mental shape by which 
his words and his actions are regulated, so that 

[66] 



REGENERATION 

although he may school himself at times to speak 
a foreign tongue, it will ever be with his own 
accent; and although he may train himself to 
an alien course of action, he will ever revert to 
his natural habits. It is even doubtful whether 
a man of one mental fashion can ever understand 
a man of another; it is likely that they will be 
to each other an enigma for all time, perpetually 
misunderstanding and mistaking one another. 
To the ordinary Englishman, a Frenchman will 
always appear more or less a fribble, and his 
high spirit and fine taste will be hidden; while 
an Englishman will always appear to the ordinary 
Frenchman as little less than a barbarian, stolid 
and coarse, and the English sense of justice and 
brave perseverance will also be hidden. Both 
men would have to be reborn, each within the 
country of the other, to be able to understand 
his neighbor. One who is the son of a rich man, 
and who has been accustomed to look at life 
from the standpoint of a capitalist, will never 
appreciate the grievances and ambitions of the 
proletariat, and a son of the people will, through 
no blame of his own, have wrong-headed ideas 
about those who dress in purple and fine linen. 
A thoughtful person can hardly express himself 
to one who is uneducated, and a Philistine rebels, 
as by instinct, against the manners and attitude 
of a cultured man. One class would have to be 
recast before it could enter into the mind of 
another; and if this be true with regard to 
nationality, social position, and education, it is 
ten times more true in. the matter of religion. 
Religious and irreligious persons belong to dif- 

[67] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

ferent spheres which hardly have a common 
frontier, which has each its own language and 
its own habits. Bunyan, in his autobiography, 
relates how he saw certain old women sitting in 
the sun in a street of Bedford, and heard them 
speaking together about the affairs of the soul. 
They spoke his English tongue, and they were 
people of his own condition, but after hearing 
them he concluded that he knew nothing what- 
ever about religion, for their words sounded 
strange in his ears, and they were talking of a 
country where he had never been. When St. 
Paul stood at the bar of the Roman judge, and 
Felix looked at him from the judgment seat, it 
was altogether impossible for Felix to appreciate 
the position of St. Paul, although the eloquence 
of the Apostle touched the Roman's heart, and 
it is evident that St. Paul was not able to esti- 
mate the time-serving disposition of the Roman 
official. St. Paul was concerned about Felix's 
soul, and Felix hoped that St. Paul would have 
offered him a bribe. They were strangers one 
to another, the one a citizen of this world which 
is passing away, the other a citizen of the world 
which remaineth for ever. The religious man 
has his own idea of God, and of right, and of 
humanity, but he has no means of making it plain 
to the irreligious man. The irreligious man 
wanders about outside the sphere of the religious 
man's ideas, as one travels round a cathedral 
seeing nothing but the confused scenes on the 
windows which he cannot recognize from the 
outside, and hearing the faint sound of praise 
which he does not understand. What is neces- 

[68] 



REGENERATION 

sary for the man outside is to come inside, to be 
lifted out of his own sphere of thought into that 
of Christ, or, in other words, to be changed in 
the very centre of his being. This change is 
the rebirth of Jesus's teaching which caught the 
imagination and excited the hope of Nicodemus. 
It is a birth which cannot be from beneath, it 
can only be from above. It is a rebirth which 
changes a man's attitude for ever and is the 
beginning of a new life. It is, of course, 
mysterious, but it is real, and without it there 
is no possibility of true religion. '* Blame not 
the word ' conversion,' " says Carlyle in his 
Sartor Resartus, ''rejoice rather that such a 
word signifying such a thing has come to light 
in our modern era, though hidden from the 
wisest ancients. The old world knew nothing 
of conversion; instead of an Ecce Homo they 
had only some choice of Hercules. It was a 
new-attained progress in the moral development 
of man; hereby has the highest come home to 
the bosom of the most limited; what to Plato 
was but an hallucination, and to Socrates but 
a chimera, is now clear and certain to your 
Zinzendorfs, and the poorest of your Wesleys, 
and Pietists, and Methodists." 

Regeneration must be understood in a gen- 
erous sense, and on no account must its form 
be limited, for there will be as many kinds of 
conversion as there are kinds of men. Certainly 
there are at least four different types of conver- 
sion — four experiences by which men have 
passed from darkness into light — and one of the 
most striking is moral conversion. Within the 

[69] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

Gospels the classical illustration will ever be St. 
Mary Magdalene, from whose life the chains of 
sin fell in an instant, and who passed at once 
from nameless degradation into the holiness of 
Jesus's fellowship. Outside the Gospels there is 
no more convincing illustration than the experi- 
ence of St. Augustine, who was held in the bonds 
of sensual sin long after he was convinced that 
Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that Chris- 
tianity was the true faith. While he was bitterly 
lamenting his miserable condition, he heard a 
voice — and who shall say that it did not sound? 
— calling upon him to take up the Holy Script- 
ures and to read a passage that will ever be as- 
sociated with his name ; " Not in rioting and 
drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, 
not in strife and envying. But put ye on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the 
flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." He adds : '' I 
had neither desire nor need to read further. As 
I finished the sentence, as though the light of 
peace had been poured into my heart, all the 
shadows of doubt dispersed. Thou . convertedst 
me unto Thyself, so that I sought neither wife 
nor any hope of this world, standing in that rule 
of faith in which Thou so many years before 
hadst revealed me to my mother." From that 
time forward St. Augustine may have sinned, as 
the best of men fall from their perfection, but 
never after the fashion of former days. Against 
the sin which once enslaved him he never ceased 
to testify, and he passed to the opposite extreme 
of asceticism. His experience was that of one 
who had turned completely round, and for whom 

[70] 



REGENERATION 

in a moment everything became new, so that the 
most dangerous and corrupting of habits, the 
habits of sensual sin, passed utterly away as 
though it had never been. 

Another form of conversion is intellectual, 
where one emerges from the darkness of error 
into the light of the truth. Nathanael had puz- 
zled himself regarding the signs of the Messiah 
until he refused to believe that the Messiah had 
come, but suddenly, on his meeting with Jesus, 
all his former preconceptions passed away, and 
he saw, as by a flash, the character of the Messiah 
in the face of Jesus. One minute he was con- 
vinced that no good thing could" come out of 
Nazareth, and the next he was confessing, with 
utter gladness of heart, " Thou art the Son of 
God, Thou art the King of Israel." Martin 
Luther, burdened with the sense of his own sins 
and longing for the peace of holiness, made his 
pilgrimage to the city which was the capital of 
Christendom and the home of the Vicar of Christ. 
Anxious to use every means of grace, so that 
he might on no account miss salvation, he was 
ascending the steps of Pilate's staircase upon his 
knees with a crowd of pilgrims, when the word 
came to him, " The just shall live by faith." He 
rose without delay and left the place, and in that 
hour he was delivered from the superstition which 
had held his reason in bondage. The whole sys- 
tem of his theology crumbled into pieces, and a 
new system took its place, as when the darkness 
flees before the rising of the sun. 

The third form of conversion is not so much 
moral nor intellectual as it is practical. As Jesus 

[71] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

walked upon the shore of the GaHlean Lake He 
called Peter and John and commanded them to 
follow Him. They left their nets and followed 
Him upon the promise that instead of being fish- 
ermen on the Lake of Galilee they should become 
fishers of men the world over. This was the 
great event in their lives, and from it sprang that 
spiritual character and magnificent service by 
which they have laid all generations under a debt 
of gratitude, and by which they now sit on twelve 
thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. It 
would be only a matter of a few seconds — "' Fol- 
low Me," and they followed Him — but centuries 
have not exhausted the content of that word. A 
young man of Assisi is banqueting with certain 
companions, and is visited with such strange 
thoughts that he withdraws himself from their 
fellowship and goes into the open air. As he 
stands beneath the clear Umbrian sky, with the 
stars looking down upon him, he is moved for 
the first time in his life by love, and surrenders 
himself to her service. He goes along the road 
with his companions, and they charge him with 
being a lover, and he confesses that he has found 
his bride. They do not understand, but in after 
years it appears that his bride was Poverty, 
whom none had wooed since Jesus lived, and to 
whom St. Francis was to give his Hfe. Can any 
one doubt that the decision of that evening was 
St. Francis's conversion, from which, as from a 
spring that had arisen at the touch of Christ's 
crucified hands, there flowed a stream of charity 
which has made beautiful the history of the 
Church, and surely has come from the very heart 
of Jesus Himself? 

[72] 



REGENERATION 

There is one other type of conversion, which 
may be called spiritual, when all the truth which 
a person possesses is changed into life, and one 
passes from forms to reality. This was the ex- 
perience of that chief Pharisee whom Jesus met 
on the way to Damascus ; and this was the ex- 
perience of the greatest of Scottish divines — 
when Dr. Chalmers, who had been an orthodox 
theologian and a clean-living man, but formal 
and cold-hearted, realized for the first time the 
meaning of two magnitudes, the shortness of 
time and the greatness of eternity. In this con- 
version the beautifully shaped marble of a cor- 
rect and traditional religion suddenly glows, and 
is touched with life as when the statue turned 
into a living being. It matters little through 
what avenue the Spirit of God enters into a man's 
nature if only the Spirit has free access and ac- 
compHshes His great work, and the man is born 
again of the Holy Ghost, and remade by the very 
power of God. 

Various interesting questions may be raised 
regarding the time of regeneration, and, again, 
we ought to allow a great latitude in experience. 
There are doubtless some, and they are highly 
favored, who have hardly been born into this 
world according to the flesh, before they are born 
again according to the Spirit, who from their 
first years have their faces turned toward God 
and who always bear the likeness of His beloved 
Son, For them there is no double life, and for 
them, therefore, there is no marked change, but 
all their Hfe flows in one direction, from earth to 
heaven. With others there has been no agony 

[73] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

of doubt, and no crisis of faith, for they have 
passed so imperceptibly into Hght that they can- 
not tell the day when they were born again. 
Doubtless there was such a day, for they are evi- 
dently regenerated; but when they awoke, the 
sun had long risen, and their chamber was 
flooded with Hght. Others there are, and not a 
few, who can tell with certainty before God and 
man the day when they experienced the great 
change, and their souls were born again of the 
Holy Ghost. It is not for one moment to be sup- 
posed that their account of the beginning of the 
spiritual life is only an illusion of fanaticism. 
There is nothing incredible in the direction of 
a life being changed within the space of an hour, 
and, indeed, the great events of life are instan- 
taneous. Many things have gone before this 
sudden conversion, so that a person may have 
been prepared for that moment during years of 
doubt and trial and discipline. Many things will 
follow after, before the tiny seed of life comes to 
its full height and perfect shape, but the actual 
conversion may be as rapid as the opening of a 
flower in the morning, as a breath of wind upon 
the surface of the sea. Nor is this experience 
contrary to human nature or without its parallels 
in other provinces of life. A son has played the 
prodigal and broken his mother's heart; he re- 
turns on the news of her illness and enters her 
chamber to find her dead. By her bedside he 
kneels, and in that hour the power of a besetting 
sin is broken, and he leaves the room invulner- 
able against its temptation. A lad, unconscious 
of his talents and feeling about for his lifework, 

[74] 



REGENERATION 

picks up a book of science, and ere he has read 
a page he understands his calHng. A man with 
disengaged heart and careless of social ties sees 
a woman's face, and the current of his life sets 
in a new direction. No one can explain how the 
change is effected, no one can describe his own 
experience. The wind blew where it listed, and 
it was viewless, but the sound was in the heart, 
and the power was in the life. Savonarola was 
checked in love, and turned aside from the world : 
he gave himself to the service of God, and in the 
end sealed his testimony with his life. Once and 
again, in the Duomo of Florence, he referred to 
his conversion, and he used to say with emphasis, 
" A word did it," but he never told the word, 
and that word must always be a secret between a 
man and his God. 



[75] 



rhe FICJRIOUS SACRIFICE of JESUS 
CHRIST 



The VICARIOUS SACRIFICE of JESUS 
CHRIST 

WHEN Caiaphas, the titular Jewish 
High Priest and the agent of a much 
more crafty man, the actual High 
Priest Annas, laid down this principle in the High 
Council of the nation that it was- expedient one 
man should die for the nation, and used it as an 
argument for the judicial murder of Jesus Christ, 
he afforded a remarkable illustration of how one 
may mean what is utterly false and may at the 
same time say what is profoundly true. Caiaphas 
in this utterance was at once defending the most 
wicked act in all human history, and declaring 
one of the most precious truths in all human 
experience. What he meant was that it would 
be a good stroke of policy to silence Jesus for 
ever, because Jesus was teaching unwelcome 
truths, and might deliver His fellow-countrymen 
from the yoke of the Temple exactions. What 
really happened as the result of his action was 
that Jesus overcame the power of sin upon the 
Cross of Calvary and achieved the spiritual de- 
liverance of the human race. Many good things, 
as, for instance, the English Reformation, have 
sprung from the basest of motives, and one must 
very carefully distinguish between the malign 

[79] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

scheme of the Jewish ruler, which is ever to be 
reprobated, and its splendid results in the re- 
demption of Jesus Christ. For God made light 
to spring out of darkness, and where sin 
abounded grace has much more abounded. It 
indeed has come to pass in the crucifixion that 
where sin reached its most shameless and victori- 
ous height the Grace of God accomplished His 
most benevolent and fruitful purpose. 

Certainly it was not expedient that Christ 
should die in the sense that Caiaphas intended, 
for whatever we may think of vicarious sacrifice, 
we must hold fast by the principle that for a 
judge to send an innocent man to death is a most 
unjust thing and can never be excused, and also 
by the principle that nothing which is unjust can 
ever be expedient or can be justified by its re- 
sults. When the Pharisees formed a dishonor- 
able alliance with the priests, and the priests cor- 
rupted Judas Iscariot, and the priests and the 
Pharisees together accomplished the death of 
Jesus Christ, they committed the basest crime 
and they earned a most deserved condemnation. 
The crucifixion of Jesus through the plotting of 
these men was a colossal outrage upon the laws 
of their own State and upon the traditions of the 
nation. It ended, as by a natural consequence, 
in the historical and indescribable punishment of 
the destruction of Jerusalem. Should it happen, 
as it sometimes does in human Hfe, that a crime 
produces good fruit, that blessing will be shared 
by many, but the perpetrator of the crime will 
only have the punishment; and so it has come 
to pass that the world goes on a pilgrimage to 

[80] 



The FICARIOUS SACRIFICE c/ JESUS CHRIST 

the Cross of Jesus and returns with the gift of 
everlasting life, but the names of the men who 
caused that Cross to be erected, and, using 
Roman hands, caused Christ to be nailed there- 
on, shall be a byword and a reproach unto all 
generations. 

While this is true, and must ever be kept in 
mand, might it not be expedient that an innocent 
man, against whom no charge of sin could be 
proven and whose goodness deserved only the 
highest reward, should take his own life in his 
hands and lay it down of his own accord on be- 
half of the people? Had the priests and Phari- 
sees been candid and honorable men, they would 
have heard Christ gladly, and would have treated 
Him with all honor, so that He never should 
have known want, and they would have shielded 
Him from the shadow of insult, so that He would 
have had authority in the land. Suppose, how- 
ever, that Jesus did not wish to guard Himself 
from suffering, and to live at ease, but was willing 
to be betrayed and outraged and crucified in de- 
votion to the will of God and for the good of His 
fellow-men, is not this an altogether beautiful 
thing? and if the human race on their part, real- 
izing the immense victory of the Cross of Jesus 
Christ, and feeling their constant need of Him, 
be willing throughout all the ages to take the gift 
which He has won by His Passion and by His 
Death, may not this also be expedient and just? 
This question appeals both to the intellect and to 
the conscience, and upon the answer depends 
whether we can accept the doctrine of Jesus's 
vicarious sacrifice. 

[8i] 



x^ 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

The question has the greater weight because 
no one can estimate the nature and force of Chris- 
tianity without discovering that in the last issue 
all its benefits have been won as it were at the 
point of the Cross and that all it offers springs 
from the Fountain of Calvary. When St. Paul 
summed up the energy of Christianity in the 
Cross of Christ, he not only used a very felicitous 
image, which will ever cling to the memory and 
inspire the heart, but he also went to the very 
root of things, and stated the inwardness of our 
rehgion. What is true of Christ is also true of 
Christ's Cross, that it is the living Way by which 
the human soul passes into the fellowship of the 
Father. E stands out in religious experience on 
the border between Hght and darkness like the 
frontier post between Canada and the United 
States in former days, so that when the fugitive 
slave passed this point he became a freed man 
and no one could afterwards enslave him. It is 
at the Cross that the terror of guilt and the shac- 
kles of moral bondage fall from off a man's soul 
and he enters into the Hberty of the sons of God, 
a man whose sin is forgiven and whose iniquity 
is cleansed.3 Is not the Cross also the source of 
all heavenly thoughts, of all spiritual reinforce- 
ments, of all gracious aspirations? By the con- 
tact of this Cross, as we become its partakers in 
daily life, we are raised above the things of sense 
and enter into the fulness of life. Just in propor- 
tion as the disciple is crucified in that proportion 
is he a Christian, and just as he takes his stand- 
point by the Cross has he a true understanding 
of the life which now is, and of that which is to 
[82] 



The VICARIOUS SACRIFICE tf/ JESUS CHRIST 

come. As one considers the chief doctrines of 
our faith, regeneration, justification, and sanctifi- 
cation, he cannot but see them hanging as fruits 
upon the bitter tree of the Cross, which was no 
sooner planted than it began to grow and to bud, 
so that its leaf has never faded and its fruit has 
never failed. 

Some people, however, are face to face with a 
certain ethical difficulty and cannot in honesty 
pass on without its settlement — whether in truth, 
if you go into the heart of the matter, this vicari- 
ous sacrifice was not unjust, and whether it is 
possible that any person can be saved from sin 
in an unjust way. This difficulty resolves itself 
into two questions, and the first is this : Is it right 
that one who has made great sacrifices should 
not enjoy his just reward, and one who has made 
none should be endowed with that reward ? 

Granted, it may be said, that it was an alto- 
gether becoming thing that Jesus should sacrifice 
Himself, and granted that immense benefit has 
come to the race from His death, is this sacrifice 
founded on any principle of justice, and had the 
race any right to the benefit it has grasped? 
When a person asks this question, it is evident 
that he has a certain idea of the conditions of 
human life, which is in the background of his 
mind, and to which he is accustomed to refer. 
He thinks of each person as a separate unit, be- 
ginning life on his own account, living on his 
own account, dying on his own account. He 
imagines that every man stands in his own place, 
and that his destiny is absolutely independent of 
his nearest neighbor. If the man mixes a bitter 

[83] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

cup, that cup must he drink ; if it be a sweet cup, 
that cup shall be his. None can exchange the 
cup, bitter or sweet, with another man. What 
we sow in the springtime we must reap in the 
days of harvest, and there is no power of interfer- 
ence anywhere so that the man who sowed tares 
shall receive wheat any more than the man that 
sowed wheat shall be cursed with tares. Unto 
every man his due, is surely the principle of 
Eternal Law ; and if that be the case, how can 
any man stand in Christ's place, or Christ stand 
in any man's place. 

Regarding this idea of life it seems perfectly 
fair that if you have made your bed you must lie 
on it, and if you have sown the wind you must 
reap the whirlwind. One may admit that it not 
only seems right but that it is logically right, 
and that life ought theoretically to be constructed 
on this individualistic principle. Every person, 
however, is aware how little the logic of the 
schools has to do with the practical rules of life, 
and one is bound to enquire whether as a matter 
of fact life really does rest upon the independence 
of the individual. Perhaps it may in the planet 
of Mars, but it certainly does not in this world. 
We have no experience of this absolute individ- 
ualism, this separation of one man's destiny from 
another, this rigid recompense whereby every 
one receives exactly what he has earned and 
nothing which he has not earned. What we do 
see is men, women, and children so inextricably 
linked together that one man falling carries down 
twenty with him, and one man standing fast in 
his integrity bears the strain of twenty other lives. 

{84] 



The VICARIOUS SACRIFICE ^/ JESUS CHRIST 

What we realize in our day is not individualism, 
but rather collectivism, which means that the 
race is not made up of an innumerable number of 
single lies which have no connection one with 
another, but that the race is a huge body with 
common feelings both of joy and sorrow, so that 
if one member be injured, all the other members 
shall suffer ; and if one member be strong, all the 
others shall share in the strength. 

When an intelligent person takes an intellect- 
ual or ethical objection to vicarious sacrifice, one 
would imagine that this principle were a pure 
monopoly of theological speculation, and that he 
had never seen it acting in his own life. Has this 
man owed nothing to the services and to the sac- 
rifices of others who have gone before him and 
whom perhaps he has never known? Was he 
not brought into being at the grave peril and with 
the bitter anguish of his mothei ? May he not 
have been a sickly child, or whom people said 
that he could never be reared nor reach the estate 
of manhood, and he has been reared and has 
come to be a man through the sleepless nights 
and weary days of his mother, through her loss 
of pleasure and sacrifice of ease ? Is he not then 
a fruit of vicarious sacrifice in one of its purest 
and most pathetic forms? This man also is the 
citizen of a nation, and has a share in the gov- 
ernment of its affairs, but he is aware that there 
was a day when his ancestors had no voice in 
government and were only bondsmen in their 
own land, at the mercy of every tyrant, political 
and ecclesiastical. How does it come to pass that 
this man has not only freedom of conscience but 

[85] 




4 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

also freedom of action? Has he won his just 
rights by his own exertions and by his own suf- 
fering? Is it not the case that men to whom 
God gave the spirit of patriotism long ago were 
willing to sacrifice their goods and even their 
lives for blessings which they did not enjoy them- 
selves and which, except with the eye of proph- 
ecy, they could not see? These blessings were 
bought with their blood and they are enjoyed by 
their children, and none of us objects that this 
gain is an evidence of injustice. How does it 
come to pass that one lad begins Hfe in abject 
poverty and in moral misery while another has 
the advantage of good education and a careful 
training? That one starts as it were with an 
accumulated capital of goodness, and the other 
starts hopelessly bankrupt? Certainly the one 
has no blame, and certainly the other has no 
credit. Before each lad lived his father, the father 
of one lad a careless and selfish man, gratifying 
his own pleasures and his own sins, the other a 
hard-working and severe-living man, thinking 
not of himself but of his children, and willing to 
suffer if so be that they enjoy. They have en- 
joyed, and now this lad's successful career is an 
illustration and a vindication of vicarious sacri- 
fice. Is it not right that a man should suffer for 
others, and do we not admire his suffering? Is it 
not allowable that another should receive the 
benefit of that sacrifice, and are we not all with 
perfect satisfaction of conscience debtors on the 
ordinary plane of life through vicarious sacrifice ? 

r^^ome years ago, to condense the whole argu- 
ment in a single illustration, a merchant vessel 
[86] 



rhe VICARIOVS SACRIFICE ^/ JESUS CHRIST 

went out from a port on the western coast and 
was driven upon the rocks in one of the great 
storms. Boats could not Hve in such a sea, and 
it was a question whether any man could swim 
through the surf to the shore. One after another 
each man of the crew put on his life belt and 
jumped overboard till at last the captain only re- 
mained upon the deck of the vessel. No men in 
our commonwealth are more loyal to their duty, 
or discharge their duty in a more unassuming 
way, than the captains of our merchant service. 
They are men who are willing to sacrifice every- 
thing, even unto their life, in fulfilment of their 
charge, who have learnt the meaning of courage 
in a hard school. This man had already put on 
his belt and was about to make his fight for Hfe, 
when out of the vessel somewhere there crept a 
poor lad and stood beside him. He was simply 
a street arab who had stowed himself away in the 
vessel, and now, under pressure of danger and in 
terror of life, had come upon the deck a miser- 
able, helpless, shivering atom of human life. The 
captain looked at him and looked at the surf, and 
there was not another life belt. The captain had 
either to give him his belt and most likely be 
drowned, or save his own life and leave the lad 
to perish. This brave man put his Hfe belt on the 
lad and sent him overboard, so that the lad 
reached the shore while the captain himself per- 
ished in the waves. One of course may say that 
it had been better to let the boy perish, for what 
was he worth to the commonwealth, or even to 
himself? Would it not also have been a gain 
if the captain's life had been saved, for he was 

[87] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

worth much to his family and to the State? It 
is, however, impossible to criticise such conduct. 
Our hands are not steady enough to hold the 
scales before such magnificent heroism. What- 
ever one may think of vicarious sacrifice, of its 
expediency or of its justice, there is no man who 
would not give the crown to the memory of such 
a gallant seaman. It is therefore perfectly clear, 
when one closes the Bible and turns from the life 
of Christ, that one does not go outside the law 
of vicarious sacrifice, but that in great straits of 
life a man still stands in the stead of his neighbor, 
so that he endures for him, and even dies for 
him, while he for whom he dies is endowed with 
great privileges and inestimable gifts. This is 
the law which runs through human life, which 
.^can be verified in every street of every city, and 
in every home where there is any nobility of 
thought. 

Is not this also a beautiful law which endears 
unto us all the person who has obeyed it, and 
gives him his due reward of affection ? Consider, 
for instance, the Divine Person who made Him- 
self the Victim, and so wrought salvation for His 
race. He accepted the scourge and the nails. He 
humbled Himself and became obedient unto the 
Cross, and now He has been highly exalted and 
has obtained a Name which is above every name. 
Without the Cross there had been no Son of God 
within our knowledge, and no Son of Man with- 
in our heart ; there had been no Head of the 
Church without the Cross. Jesus had been with- 
out His praise and without His power had He 
not been crucified upon Calvary. No injustice, 

[88] 



The VICARIOUS SACRIFICE <?/ JESUS CHRIST 

therefore, has been done to Him who suffered 
our disabilities ; no injustice to them who have 
received His benefits. No message is so swift 
and certain as Love ; no Love has been so strong 
as that which has on it the imprint of the wounded 
hands and feet. No example is so inspiring as 
that of selflessness ; none so quick to make us 
brave and pure. The greatest regenerative power 
in the world is love, and it was love which made 
Christ surrender His heavenly glory and lay 
down His hfe for the world. 

It is, however, impossible to shut one's eyes to 
the fact that at one point the sacrifice of Christ 
has no illustration in human life, and, indeed, 
could not have any. A second question, there- 
fore, arises. Can one who has sinned be counted 
righteous because one who has not sinned ac- 
cepted his penalty? Jesus was without question 
a martyr in His devotion to the will of God and 
to the welfare of man, and from His martyrdom 
have flowed constant and inestimable blessings. 
We have learned the love of God, and the glory 
of humanity, the type of the perfect life and the 
unspeakable degradation of sin. We have re- 
ceived an example of high living and the inspira- 
tion of a great leader. The best things have 
flowed come to us through Jesus's sacrifice as on 
lower levels of life great benefits have come to 
us through political and social martyrs. No 
martyr, however, has ever suffered literally in 
another's stead, so that he took the place of the 
person for whom he suffered and the person for 
whom he suffered stepped into his place. No 
one in human experience has taken upon him the 

[89] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

guilt of a brother man, and has expiated that 
guilt after a legal fashion, so that the innocent 
was treated as guilty, and the guilty has been 
treated as innocent. This is the last extreme, 
and it is also the crown of vicarious sacrifice, and 
this is the measure of the vicarious sacrifice of 
Christ. 

No person can read Jesus's life and have any 
doubt of His perfect sinlessness, for He was ex- 
posed to the fiercest criticism and was followed 
at every turn by the most watchful enemies, and 
vyet He was able to give the challenge and ask 
aoy one to convict Him of sin. From every side 
witnesses arose willing and unwilling to bear wit- 
ness to His innocence, not only men and women 
who beHeved in Him and loved Him, but also the 
traitor who betrayed Him, and the judge who 
sent Him to His death. Alone of all the sons 
of men He walked in white unstained and radiant 
through the miry paths of life, and when He died 
He died as a just man and as the Son of God. 

We cannot read His life without also observ- 
ing that, from the beginning to the end. He was 
treated as an unjust person would have been, and 
in the end as the very chief of sinners. The con- 
sideration given to the poorest of men was denied 
to Him, and the justice, both of Jewish and of 
Roman laws, was broken that He might be con- 
demned. By every scheme of iniquity was His 
condemnation secured, with every circumstance 
of cruelty was His death carried out. It is an 
outstanding fact that the most innocent of all 
men shared the fate of the most guilty. Jesus did 
not at any time complain of this transposition of 

[90] 



rhe VICARIOUS SACRIFICE ,?/ JESUS CHRIST 

lot, but throughout His whole life accepted it as 
His calling of God. It was for other men to live, 
and Jesus constantly insisted upon the glory of 
life. It was for Himself to die, and the only 
death about which He spake was His own upon 
the Cross. His death and the life of His disciples 
were connected together in His mind, inasmuch 
as He died that they might live, and the cross to 
which He moved was the gateway of life ever- 
lasting for the world. The reader of Jesus's life 
will also notice that His death was invested with 
a mysterious pain and horror, so that not only 
was its shadow flung across the three years of 
His public life, and, it may be, earHer days, but 
He came to regard the approach of the Cross 
with sinking of heart. History records the brav- 
ery and peace of soul with which the witnesses 
of Christ have looked forward to the scafifold, so 
that they slept the night before execution, and 
anticipated death with a high heart. This man, 
braver than them all, agonized the night through 
before His death, so that He cried aloud and 
sweated great drops of blood. This cannot mean 
that He had not the faith and resolution of St. 
Peter or St. Paul ; this must mean that His death 
had in it a shame and an agony which were un- 
known and never could be known to any of His 
disciples. 

We can in measure understand why Jesus 
agonized in Gethsemane when we listen to what 
He said in the Upper Room. As He gave the 
bread and wine, the symbol of His love and of 
His death, to His disciples. He declared that His 
blood was to be shed not simply for their good 

[91] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

and in revelation of the divine love, but for the 
remission of their sin. Because He died their 
sin would be forgiven, and therefore, before dy- 
ing. He must have taken upon Him the load of 
their guilt, and in dying He must have expiated 
the same, according to the demands of everlast- 
ing law and according to the will of God. This 
Good Shepherd, as He explained, would lay 
down His life for the sheep. He would give His 
life as a ransom for many. If, indeed, the sin of 
the human race gathered in one huge penalty 
and cloud of guilt upon the head of Jesus Christ, 
then it is no wonder that He suffered in Geth- 
semane and besought the Father that the cup 
should pass from Him, nor that on the Cross, as 
He realized in His heart the horror of the 
world's sin. He should have cried, " My God, 
My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " 

This explanation of Jesus's vicarious sacrifice 
has, of course, raised great difficulties in the 
mind, and we are accustomed to ask how it is 
possible that an innocent person should be con- 
sidered guilty, and a guilty person should be ac- 
cepted as innocent. And we are constantly 
insisting that there is no parallel in human life 
to this transaction, and that such an interchange 
would never be tolerated in any earthly court of 
justice. Certainly there is no exact parallel, 
and human justice must not be administered 
after this fashion ; but there is in human life an 
approximate parallel which has its own signifi- 
cance, not so much as an argument, but rather 
as an illustration. Is it not the case that hus- 
bands and wives are so closely united that in 

[923 



The VICARIOVS SACRIFICE tf/ JESUS CHRIST 

society the guilt of the man casts its shadow over 
the woman, and she may suffer in human judg- 
ment who herself has done no wrong? Is it not 
also the case that a son who has done wrong 
and given great offence to society is pardoned 
and restored to favor on account of the character 
and services of his father? Not only have we 
received benefit which we have never earned 
through the sacrifice of other people, not only 
have we disabilities which we have not deserved 
through the weakness of other people, but there 
are circumstances where the shadow of a crime 
not his own darkens another man's life, and 
where the credit of goodness not his own has 
cleansed the shadow from a sinner's life. 

We ought, however, always to remember that 
it is not only not necessary to show the exact 
parallel between the conditions of human life 
and the conditions of Jesus's sacrifice, but we are 
the rather bound to believe that if we are to enter 
into the heart of this sacrifice, we must be pre- 
pared to find it far transcending the province of 
human life. And the ground for this expecta- 
tion lies in the person of Christ. It is impossi- 
ble to understand in any degree the sacrifice of 
Jesus at its deepest without understanding in 
some degree Himself, for this was not an ordi- 
nary man who suffered and died upon the Cross. 
This man took upon Him not simply the nature 
of an individual, but the nature of our race. 
From all ages He was the Archetype of human- 
ity, and in the fulness of time He was revealed as 
its Head. In Him humanity was gathered up 
and fulfilled, so that He is related to every man 

[93] 



ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

that was ever born, and under Him as a Head all 
men are gathered. While it is true that He 
offered Himself a sacrifice for men, it is also true 
that in Him each member of His body was 
crucified and died, so that the expiation upon 
the Cross was the expiation not of a single per- 
son, but of the whole humanity in Him who was 
its Representative and Priest. As the several 
members of the race are intimately connected, so 
is the race and Jesus one. What He does for us 
He does as our Kinsman and Brother. 

It has also been urged with much reason that, 
even although Jesus was willing to sacrifice 
Himself as many a person would be willing to do 
under conditions of human justice for a criminal 
that was loved, it is incredible that the Eternal 
Judge should ever consent to a transaction so 
unjust, and far less should give it His approving 
sanction. Is it not a censure on the Eternal 
Justice that Jesus should have been treated as 
the substitute for a guilty race, and should have 
been allowed to drink its bitter cup? One for- 
gets that his mind is again held in bondage by 
the conditions and limitations of human life. 
Who is this Eternal Judge but the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Who is this 
Victim but the Eternal Son of God? It is, 
therefore, God who judges, and it is, therefore, 
God who suffers ; and if the Judge Himself be 
willing to expiate the penalty, then surely law 
could not be more splendidly vindicated, and the 
high ends of justice more fully gained. If it be 
counted a noble thing in a lowly member of the 
human race to obey the law of sacrifice, is this 

[94] 



i:he VICARIOVS SACRIFICE ^/ JESUS CHRIST 

high achievement to be denied to God Himself? 
In all this universe is there to be only one per- 
son, not only absolved from this highest of laws, 
but also forbidden its fulfilment, and that person 
to be God? Is it not more reasonable to sup- 
pose that if the Cross had become the condition 
of ethical perfection in human life, it has also 
been all along the condition of the perfect holi- 
ness of God, so that the sacrifice of God in Jesus 
Christ His Son is the very crown and glory of 
the highest law? 

It is for every person to settle with himself 
what he will do with this great sacrifice which 
has been offered by Jesus, according to the will 
of God, upon the Cross of Calvary, and with the 
innumerable benefits which this sacrifice has 
won. And here we find ourselves once more 
upon the plane of human life. We have the 
same liberty of choice with regard to the sacri- 
fice of Christ that we have with regard to the 
sacrifice of patriots. Should it be our pleasure, 
we can avail ourselves of the liberty and of the 
right which men of old have won for our com- 
monwealth and carry ourselves as free-born citi- 
zens, and accept the responsibility of our high 
citizenship. Or we can carry ourselves as bonds- 
men, refusing any share in the government of 
the country and rendering no service. We can 
also accept with grateful hearts the spiritual 
blessings which are bestowed by the Cross, 
claiming the forgiveness of sins, and taking our 
place as the sons of God. Or we can prefer 
guilt to righteousness, and remain of our own 
will in the bondage of sin. Two things are cer- 

[95] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

tain, that no man can achieve his own salvation, 
and that our salvation has been accompHshed by 
Jesus Christ. And still another thing is quite 
as certain, that by an act of consent any one can 
place himself within the merit of Jesus's sacrifice 
and secure himself an heir to its fulness of life. 
May it not be the case that our minds are 
clouded with darkness in this matter, because 
there is darkness in our hearts ? Is it not possi- 
ble that we are not able to believe in the vicarious 
sacrifice of Christ and are apt to consider it a 
thing altogether incredible because we ourselves 
are not willing to make any sacrifice and are 
leading utterly selfish lives? Is it not the case 
that, among women throughout the Christian 
world, it is the rarest thing to find that any one 
stumbles at the sacrifice of Christ? and is it not 
the case that women, whether as mothers or 
daughters or wives, are daily making sacrifices 
that men never will make and which they cannot 
even imagine ? A woman enters into the sacri- 
fice of Christ and finds in it the expectation of 
her heart, since in that sacrifice God is only 
doing on the larger scale of His Deity what she 
is doing: on the narrower scale of her human 
love. Should it be the case that any one of us 
is living in any known selfishness, then it will 
be utterly impossible for him to believe in the 
sacrifice of Christ, for his own selfishness will 
veil his mind and harden his heart. When one 
has given himself to the service of the Divine 
will, as did the Apostle of the Gentiles, without 
reserve, without pride, without regret, then he 
will pass with St. Paul into the heart of this mys- 

[96] 



The VICARIOUS SACRIFICE <?/ JESUS CHRIST 

tery. It is in moments of self-sacrifice that the 
heart grows tender and darkness turns into Hght, 
and of a sudden we find ourselves beneath the 
kindly shadow of the Cross of Christ, which for 
ever stretches its arms over the human race with 
the benediction of its vicarious sacrifice. 



[97] 



the SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 



CtTC. 



VI 

The SOVEREIGNTY ^/ GOD 

CERTAIN doctrines of the Christian faith 
may be called Catholic because they are 
held by the whole Church of Christ 
throughout all her branches and amid all her 
controversies. They are so distinctly a part of 
Divine revelation and so inextricably woven into 
the experiences of the soul that to deny them 
were almost profane, and to ignore them is 
spiritual paralysis. Prominent in this class 
stands the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ and 
His atoning sacrifice upon the Cross, from which 
doctrines the Church departs at her peril, in 
which abiding she always triumphs. Any body 
of Christians which has denied the one or the 
other has gradually lost spiritual power, as when 
the sap returns to the trunk and the branches 
wither away ; the history of the Christian Church 
bears witness alike to the vitalizing power of 
these doctrines and the death which befalls all 
who deny them. Certain doctrines, again, may 
be called provincial because they are held by 
some branches only of the one spiritual Church 
of Christ, and are overlooked or denied by others. 
No doubt they have their sanction in Holy Script- 
ure, else they had never been accepted by saints 
and scholars, but their evidence is not so over- 

[loi] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

whelming as to compel general conviction. They 
have their vindication also in the experience of 
the soul, but they are not universal in their hold. 
An excellent illustration of this kind is the dogma 
of election, which has been more or less firmly 
held by the Puritan, and more or less distinctly 
denied by the Roman, pole of Christian thought, 
and which, sometimes for weal — the firm con- 
solation of robust spirits; sometimes for woe — 
the bitter anxiety of those that were bowed down ' 
— has wielded an irresistible influence on those 
who lived within the memory of this genera- 
tion. 

There is a fashion in doctrine, and it may be 
frankly admitted that the majestic conception 
of Divine sovereignty has fallen on evil days, 
because it has either become obsolete, or it has 
been turned into a reproach. Letters have al- 
ways had their quarrel with this ancient faith 
from the days of the humanists, who saw its 
shadow cast over the careless gayety of life in 
the period of the Renaissance; and in our time, 
notwithstanding the grim assistance of Carlyle, a 
Scot saturated with the Shorter Catechism, this 
doctrine has been unstrung and lost its grip in 
the pagan atmosphere of our strongest living 
poets and novelists. The rebirth of the Father- 
hood of God in the theology of Maurice, and in 
the early books of George MacDonald, power- 
fully affected the religious mind, and alienated 
it from this doctrine as it had been stated in 
past centuries. This revolt found an ally also in 
the teaching of pious but unlearned evangelists, 
who, it may be said without uncharitable reflec- 

[ 102 ] 



The SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 

tion, did not perhaps grasp this doctrine, and 
who certainly judged it expedient to let the 
Divine decrees severely alone, and, instead of 
explaining the Will of God, to make their direct 
and affectionate appeal to the souls of men. 
Without recantation or explanation, the Puritan 
pulpit has quietly allowed the doctrine to fall 
into the background, so that Mr. Spurgeon was 
the last preacher of the grand order to declare it 
without apology and to apply it to the upbuilding 
of faith, while a young modern would as soon 
think of discussing the identity of the Lost Ten 
Tribes as choosing election for the subject of 
a sermon. Persons of unblemished faith who 
would on no account deny or belittle what they 
regard as a truth of Holy Scripture, prefer that 
it should be kept in reserve, partly because it is 
one of the deep things of God which they do not 
hope to understand, partly because its treatment 
in the past has not been always for the comfort 
of the soul. One does not exaggerate, therefore, 
in saying that election is a forgotten and an 
opprobrious doctrine. 

What this doctrine was in the days of its 
royalty there is little doubt, for men were not 
afraid to declare it or to place its meaning upon 
permanent record. Of course there were differ- 
ences in the accidents of the doctrine, but none 
in its essence. Some stalwarts of unflinching 
logic might hold that the purpose of election 
preceded creation in order of thought, so that 
men were virtually called into existence by the 
Will of God in order to be saved or in order to 
be damned — which is surely the furthest reach 

[103] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

of merciless reason within the range of human 
thought. Other divines of more fearful mind 
considered that the purpose of election followed 
the Fall in order of thought so that from among 
those who had merited death God of His good 
pleasure called some unto life, and in this way 
they were understood to conserve the goodness 
of God, which at any rate had saved a few out 
of a multitude, which otherwise would all have 
perished. It might be also debated whether the 
sacrifice of Christ had reference only to the elect 
or whether its overflowing benefits blessed the 
outer circle of the non-elect with uncovenanted 
mercies ; whether the offer of the Divine mercy 
ought to be made only to the few who were 
already in the purposes of God or whether the 
preacher might not be justified in extending this 
offer to all his hearers. Upon those points of 
speculation there were keen arguments, which 
to-day would be an anachronism, but which only 
proved to us the insatiable love of our fathers 
for metaphysical reasoning. But on the main 
subject of the doctrine there was absolute agree- 
ment. For any one to teach that God, foreseeing 
those who should afterwards believe, elected them 
on that account unto salvation or that any one 
co-operated with the Divine Spirit in the work of 
salvation, was flagrant and unreasonable heresy. 
There were points of distinction within the outer 
frontiers of the doctrine, but the doctrine in any 
case stood fast with sharp, clear-cut outlines that 
God of His own will, and for no reason in them- 
selves, called some to life and left others to death, 
and that according to the decrees of God it would 

[104] 



7he SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 

happen to them do as they pleased, in this world 
and that which is to come. 

As soon as this doctrine is stated one can 
understand how it came to excite such fierce 
antipathy and why it was placed more frequently 
than any other doctrine in the pillory of litera- 
ture. It cannot be stated, however softened and 
disguised, without not only exposing itself to the 
criticism of reason, but also goading the moral 
sense into unflinching opposition. Not only has 
Calvinism laid itself open to satiric wit, which 
has ever played freely upon it, but it has also 
excited hot indignation because on the face of 
things this action of the Eternal seems to be so 
unfair, so arbitrary, so ungenerous — the policy 
not of a gracious sovereign but of an irrespon- 
sible despot. No earthly parent dare cast so 
many of the children whom he has begotten 
upon the streets to starve and to perish, and 
cherish so many in his home, showering upon 
them the riches of his goodness, while he might 
have done well by them all. Any parent who 
should give such an illustration of partiality and 
injustice would be called to account, not only by 
public opinion, but by the laws of his country, 
and he could not escape in any case without 
earning disgrace and punishment. Is it not 
reasonable to argue that what would be un- 
befitting an earthly father is utterly impossible 
with God, and what would be worthy of the 
father of our flesh will be surpassed beyond our 
imagination by the Father of our spirit ? 

Besides — and this is a very damning reflection 
on any doctrine — was not this belief in the 

[105] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

irresponsibility and sovereignty of God calcu- 
lated to have an injurious and immoral effect 
alike upon those who were His beneficiaries and 
those who were His victims ? Could anything be 
more certain to fill the human heart with pride 
and to make charity impossible than the convic- 
tion that God had chosen, say, a single people 
from among all the nations of the world, and had 
made with them a covenant of love, so that He 
became their God and they became His family, 
while the other nations of the world were left 
in darkness and in the shadow of death ? The 
Hebrew prophets had to contend at every turn 
with the intense and bitter fanaticism of their 
nation, which made its boast in God and de- 
spised all other men ; and, on the other hand, 
no doctrine was more likely to destroy hope in the 
breasts of those who were outside its range than 
the belief that for them God took no care, and 
He had no love. It mattered not how such out- 
casts prayed, nor what they did, they could 
never enter in by the door into the Father's 
house, and never could receive anything but 
unconsidered fragments of the Divine Goodnes-s 
— thrown to them in the outer place as broken 
meat is cast unto the dogs. Was it not the case 
in our Lord's day that this sense of rejection and 
reprobation weighed heavily upon the minds of 
social pariahs and confirmed them in their sin 
and in their despair ? It seemed, indeed, as if 
God were only a larger Pharisee sitting alone 
with fellow-Pharisees while they wandered on 
the highways uncared for and forsaken, and laid 
themselves down under the hedges to die un- 
pitied and unregarded. 

lio6] 



The SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 

Before, however, any person refuses to con- 
sider this doctrine on the ground that it contra- 
dicts the necessary equahty of all men before 
God he ought to ask whether there is any such 
equality to be found, and whether there is not 
rather a very manifest inequality. It is always 
easy to sit in one's arm-chair and to condemn 
this doctrine because it enshrines partiality, but 
it would be well to go out into life and discover 
the evidence of impartiality. As a matter of fact 
the circumstances of life are no less perplexing 
than the idea of election, and this doctrine, like 
many another which is supposed to be unjust, 
may turn out to be in close contact with human 
life. It is unreasonable to blame theologians for 
insisting that God made distinctions, and to 
accuse them of a perverse imagination, when 
one has only to look outside to see that this 
very imagination is in action over the whole 
world. If it be indeed an axiom embedded in 
the best instincts of human nature that God 
makes no difference between one of His children 
and another, then this axiom is never argued 
in practical life, for the whole doctrine of election 
in its most pronounced form is an acting principle 
of history. 

Is it not the case that one nation stood out 
from amongst all others as the chosen of the 
Almighty, and was endowed with singular priv- 
ileges which other nations would have desired, 
and of which this nation was by no means 
worthy? With their ancient calling, their re- 
markable revelations, their unique order of 
prophets, their historical deliverances, their abso- 

[107] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

lute isolation, their overflowing energy, their 
indomitable faith, the Jews have been, and 
remain unto this day, the unanswerable evidence 
of Divine election. What is true of Israel is 
equally true of England, which has been girt 
about by the sea and has received a clear knowl- 
edge of the Evangel, and has been distinctly 
succored in straits of the national history, and 
has been endued with power unto the ends of 
the earth, and has received the gift of govern- 
ment of an undeniable kind, and all this, as any 
one can see, for great and righteous ends. 
Compare the light of the Jews with the gross 
darkness of the Gentiles, the civilization of 
England with the barbarism of an African 
people. Take the west end of a city, with 
its brightness, its culture, its luxury, and its 
pleasure; take the east end, crowded, squalid, 
hard-driven, agonized, and who is prepared to 
hold the scales of this contrast and to estimate 
its moral meaning ? And between two brothers 
of the same family what an inequality of ability, 
temper, appearance, physique ! This variety of 
lot so extreme, so irresistible, so unmerited, is 
either the result of blind, inexorable law, or 
it is the effect of living, conscious will. We 
are either caught in the coils of material and 
social forces from which we cannot escape and 
which are practically omnipotent, or we are the 
subjects of intelligent and personal government; 
and behind all laws, and, if you please, behind 
clouds of darkness, God Himself is reigning. 

And if Life, being summoned as a witness for 
the prosecution, unexpectedly affords evidence in 

[io8] 



The SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 

the defence of sovereignty, neither is this archaic 
doctrine so utterly contradicted by the conclu- 
sions of modern theology. Without doubt one 
of the finest achievements in the range of dogma 
has been the rediscovery of the Divine Father- 
hood, and no doubt this most living faith has 
been often used to impugn Divine sovereignty. 
It has seemed, indeed, to many minds a truism 
that if we believe in the Fatherhood of God, we 
must cea?se to believe in His sovereignty ; and yet 
ought it not to be evidence, to a thoughtful per- 
son, that if one is discussing authority, that of a 
judge is nothing compared with that of a father? 
The judge is only able to try certain cases which 
are placed before him, and beyond the evidence 
of the case he cannot go. His power over the 
person at the bar is Hmited to the person's acts, 
and to those few acts that have been brought 
under his survey. Within the family the father 
undertakes to do not only with action but also 
with motives. He regulates at his pleasure the af- 
fairs of his household, and assigns to each his lot, 
wath whom none may dispute, against whom none 
may rebel. He is not bound to give any reasons, 
nor does he refer to any statutes; indeed, for 
practical purposes, he acts as if he were omnis- 
cient and almighty. No sovereign of earth has 
power so absolute, none is so unfettered in his 
government, as a father. The Fatherhood of 
God does not contradict His sovereignty, but it 
in reality rehabilitates and regenerates the idea, 
giving to it an even wider range, and investing 
it with a more tender character. 

No doctrine which has at any time gripped 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the reason and inflamed the heart of any con- 
siderable body of Christian people can slip from 
the religious consciousness and be neglected in 
the teaching of truth without serious loss. Such 
doctrines do not die, they only sleep, and the 
resuscitation of this sublime conception would 
be very seasonable in our own time» It is not 
wonderful that the Roman Church has always 
regarded it with suspicion and has recognized 
in it a dangerous intellectual foe, for no idea 
has ever been such a certain safeguard against 
the priestly theory of salvation which would 
practically limit the covenanted mercy of God 
to a particular church, and conveyance of grace 
to certain sacraments. If any one believes that 
the favor of God has rested in intention upon 
a man, not only before there was any church, but 
before he himself came into being, then it surely 
follows that that favor will not be frustrated, 
and that man miss salvation because he does not 
happen to belong to a particular branch of Christ's 
Church, or because he has not been able to avail 
himself of the sacrament of the Body and Blood 
of our Lord. No accident of geography or of 
training will be allowed to bring to naught the 
sovereign grace of God ; but that grace will rest 
upon the man unto salvation, even although he 
never had the ministrations of an ordained priest 
and never had the benefit of a single sacrament. 
Nor is there any doctrine so likely to guard good 
but foolish men from religious extravagances 
and irreverent sensationalism as the profound 
conviction that they stand ever before His awful 
majesty, Who doeth as it seemeth good to Him 

[no] 



The SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 

in heaven above and on the earth beneath. 
Surely it would not be possible for preachers to 
present the message of the Divine Love in such 
unworthy and offensive shapes if they had real- 
ized the austere grandeur of the doctrine of 
election. 

If, however, this doctrine is once more to as- 
sert itself and to lay claim to something of its 
former dominion, it must appear in a new dress 
and be relieved of certain unfortunate additions. 
Men's minds must not again be driven to the 
verge of unreason by that futile and exasperating 
controversy about the relation of the will of 
God and the will of men. The logic of theology 
is strong, and, joining hands with material 
science, it may be able to prove that we have no 
freedom in life, but are quite helpless before 
irresistible forces — the mere plaything of neces- 
sity. But consciousness has surely some value; 
and if we are sure of anything, it is that we can 
choose — can harden our hearts against the 
Divine Love or can open the same hearts to the 
Elect One of God as He knocketh in His Grace 
and in His Beauty. It is time also to declare 
without any hesitation that God does not will that 
any one should die, which is stark blasphemy; 
and that He does not withhold from any one the 
means of life, which were simple treachery; but 
that He on His part willeth all to live, and that 
He has done all in His power to accomplish this 
most worthy end. If any one be saved, as an 
ancient Father has it, unto God shall be all the 
praise: if any one perishes, on him alone shall 
be all the blame. He that liveth shall owe his 

[III] 



ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

life to the Grace of God, and he that dieth shall 
die in spite of the love of God the Father, and 
the virtue of the atoning sacrifice of the Son, 
and the patient and pleading grace of the Holy 
Ghost. 

If it should still be urged that God has favored 
one man above another, it ought to be pointed 
out that this action of God need not mean repro- 
bation, but may only mean an order of salvation. 
It has been too lightly taken for granted that 
v^here God specially blessed a man in former 
days He had done so to the detriment of all 
others, and that the end of the Divine blessing 
was exhausted in the man himself. Is it not far 
more credible, and was not this the teaching of 
the Hebrew prophets, that when God gave a man 
special privileges it was not that other men might 
suffer loss and he be tempted to boast, but rather 
that on him should be laid a deeper responsi- 
bility, and that through him other men might be 
saved? There are two ways of conveying the 
blessings of civilization to a strange country, and 
it is for the rulers to judge which will best serve 
their purposes. All the privileges of citizenship 
may be conferred upon the inhabitants of that 
country at once and without reserve, in which 
case it is to be feared that those privileges would 
be wasted, and might in the end turn into a 
curse; or certain of its inhabitants, of quick in- 
telligence and susceptible disposition, might be 
selected and carefully trained that, after their 
education was completed and they had under- 
stood the principles of social order, they might 
be missionaries and teachers to their own 

[112] 



The SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 

country. After the same fashion the Eternal 
might have sent the Gospel of His grace on 
equal terms to all nations of the world at an 
early date of history, but surely in that case the 
Gospel had not been understood and would have 
been trampled under foot. His plan was rather 
to select a single nation with a genius for re- 
ligion and through the centuries to train them 
in the knowledge of His character and in the 
consciousness of His good-will, so that at an ap- 
pointed time that nation might give to a whole 
world the good news of salvation. Had the 
Eternal chosen the Jews in order to condemn 
the Gentiles, then He had been a despot. When 
He chose the Jews in order to save the Gentiles, 
He was a Sovereign. Divine sovereignty is not 
a freak of despotism, but a principle of admin- 
istration, which is a selection without reproba- 
tion, so that Abraham is chosen not that a world 
may be cast out, but that a world may be blessed 
in him. With a perverted sense of Divine sov- 
ereignty, the Jewish people were apt to insist that 
they were the favored of God without regard to 
moral character or public service, and so they 
became insolent: but again and again their 
prophets declared that because they had been 
chosen they were on that account bound unto 
holiness ; that if they departed from the Law of 
God, they of all nations would be most heavily 
punished ; and also that if they had received 
immense benefits, they were holding the same 
in trust for the world. Whosoever, therefore, 
has any advantage in this world, either because 
he knows more or because he possesses more, 

[ii3l 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

is so far elect. He is therefore called upon first 
of all to bless God with fear and trembling, since 
the responsibility of his trust is so enormous, and 
next to serve his fellow-men with all faithfulness 
and with all his might. 

Belief in Divine sovereignty bears several fruits 
which are not over-abundant in our day ; for one 
thing, it creates a majestic view of God, and this 
lies at the root of becoming and reverent religion. 
The unconscious irreverence of certain forms of 
religion in our day and the flabbiness of religious 
faith spring from inadequate conceptions of the 
power and righteousness of God. When one 
believes with the marrow of his bones that at 
the heart of the universe God reigns Almighty, 
All-Righteous, All-Wise, and All-Loving, then 
he has a worthy object of faith and a strong 
ground for prayer and a good hope of salvation. 
He is able to possess his soul in patience because 
he knows that above the fret and turmoil of this 
present life God is doing His Will and accom- 
plishing His purposes ; and in His own straits 
and dangers he has in God a refuge and a hiding- 
place. The greatest reinforcement which re- 
ligion could have in our time would be a return 
to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God. 

This belief, as it creates a majestic God, also 
makes strong men. One might conclude, if he 
knew not the fact, but were only arguing by 
theory, that minds dominated by this doctrine 
would be weakened by superstition, or cramped 
by fanaticism. It has, however, rather come to 
pass that the thinkers who have dared to make 
their way to the origin of things and to search 

[114] 



The SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 

into the mysteries of grace have been the most 
virile in the history of the Church. Whatever 
be his own opinions, no one can deny that in 
the annals of philosophy there has been no 
acuter mind than Jonathan Edwards and none 
more influential in theology than John Calvin. 
And in the conduct of life this august doctrine 
has been the mother, not of hypocrites and 
slaves, as some would have us to believe, but 
of saints and heroes. If it tamed a man's 
spiritual pride and laid him helpless at the feet 
of God, it cast on him the awful responsibility 
of holiness and it sent him forth God's freeman. 
There was only one thing this "man feared, and 
that was sin; only one being before whom he 
trembled, and that was the Eternal. The Puritan 
feared God with all his soul, and this exhausted 
his capacity for fear. The face of man he did 
not fear. What was man, even though he be a 
king, compared with the King of kings ? What 
mattered it what any man could do to him within 
whose soul God had spoken peace ? Before the 
battles of the Civil War in England the Cavaliers 
of Prince Rupert drank and sang, being gay and 
gallant gentlemen. Before the same battles the 
Puritans spent the night in prayer and reading 
of Holy Scripture, being, as it was then con- 
sidered, fools and fanatics. Pity the Cavaliers 
in their brave array when the Ironsides charged 
next morning with their battle cry, " The Sword 
of the Lord and Gideon." This iron and in- 
vincible faith has hated iniquity, broken tyranny, 
wrought righteousness, and achieved liberty. 
Witness its rolls of names, each one associated 

[115] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

with the vindication of national freedom — John 
Knox, Oliver Cromwell, the founders of the 
Dutch Republic, and the fathers of New England. 
Hear the testimony of a man not prejudiced in 
favor of Calvinism, or indeed of faith : *' The 
Calvinists attracted to their ranks almost every 
man in Western Europe that hated a lie. They 
were crushed down, but they rose again. They 
had many faults ; let him that is without sin cast 
a stone at them. They abhorred, as no body of 
men ever abhorred, all conscious mendacity, all 
impurity, all moral wrong of every kind, so far 
as they could recognize it. Whatever exists at 
this moment in England and Scotland of con- 
scientiousness and fear of doing evil is the 
remnant of the convictions which were branded 
by the Calvinists into the people's heart." 

And this faith has created a very tender re- 
ligion in the case of its best children, whether 
Hebrew Prophets or Puritan saints. They who 
suppose that pious Calvinists have as a class been 
proud and hard, know not the men nor their 
writings. They have not read Archbishop 
Leighton or Samuel Rutherford, John Bunyan 
or Richard Baxter. If any man is saved by his 
own hand — his goodness, his works, or his faith 
— then is he lifted up to heaven, and none can 
bear him; but if one honestly believes that from 
first to last he owes all to the Grace of God in 
Jesus Christ, he is filled with humility. His is 
an awful conception of salvation, but the awful- 
ness is shot through with a love which passeth 
knowledge. His election was not an act of arbi- 
trary will, it was an act of personal grace. Be- 

[ii6] 



The SOVEREIGNTY of GOD 

fore the world stood he was in the heart of God, 
and in the covenant of redemption ; God gave 
him into the charge of His Son. For him and 
such as he was this world created and the 
history of mankind arranged. Unto him do all 
the promises of the Word travel, for him were 
all the invitations of the Evangel written. Prov- 
idence united with grace, that one day, as he went 
his own way, wilful and heedless, he might be 
arrested by a great light and see the Lord. For 
him the Lord was born and was rejected and 
suffered and died and rose again. When the 
great High Priest offered his mediatorial prayer, 
this man's name was mentioned as it is now 
daily repeated before the Throne. When the 
nails were driven through the Saviour's hands, 
they pierced his name; and when the spear 
touched the Saviour's heart, his name, being 
there first, was the cause thereof; and at this 
thought his heart also is broken to flow out for 
ever in love and holiness, in devotion and sac- 
rifice, at the feet of Christ, in Whom the election 
of God stands, and by Whom it must be for ever 
judged. 



[117] 



SJFING FAITH 



VII 

SAVING FAITH 

WERE any intelligent person asked to 
name the imperative condition on 
which a soul must be saved accord- 
ing to the Christian religion, he could not 
do anything else with the Bible in his hand 
than mention faith. From beginning to end 
of the Evangel of God, from the call of Abra- 
ham in Genesis to the last invitation of the 
Spirit in Revelation, the Divine voice is clear 
and consistent. Our manifest duty is to believe, 
and the refusal to believe is destruction. There 
are various types of saintliness in Holy Scripture, 
and the Judges are very different men from the 
Apostles ; but every type is founded on faith. 
Amazing achievements were wrought by the 
heroes of Hebrew history, and the devotion of 
the first Christians arrested the world : the power 
was always faith, which was the nurse both of 
sacrifice and of charity. Exceeding precious 
promises are made in the name of God ; they are 
all contingent on faith. Heavenly revelations 
are made to simple men who were prepared to 
receive them through faith. The patriarchs unite 
in giving one sublime example of faith, the 
psalmists sing the praises of faith, the prophets 
reproach Israel with the want of faith, the apos- 

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rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

ties go everywhere preaching faith. Jesus Him- 
self made one demand of the world, that the 
world should believe in Him ; when the world 
did not believe, He was helpless and could do 
nothing; when any one showed conspicuous 
faith, Jesus could not conceal His admiration ; 
there was nothing which He could deny to faith, 
and nothing which faith. He said, could not do. 
According to Him, he that believeth is saved, 
and he that believeth not is not saved, and 
throughout the history of the Early Church the 
distinction is sharply drawn between believers 
and unbelievers. The believers are the disciples 
of Jesus, and the heirs of salvation. By faith a 
man enters the kingdom of God, and by faith 
he continues therein, and by faith he shall come 
into its fulness when the kingdom of grace be- 
comes the kingdom of glory. 

It is surely, therefore, most desirable that one 
should understand what is the nature of faith, 
and the exact meaning of this demand which our 
Master made. Faith, in the usage of common 
speech, has two senses ; and the confusion of these 
two senses has been a disaster, for it has not only 
darkened the religious mind, but has also grave- 
ly weakened the religious life. When one says 
that he believes that Jesus died and rose again, 
he is declaring his faith in a fact of history as he 
might have declared his faith in the battle of 
Waterloo. When one says that he believes in 
the doctrine of the Trinity, he is declaring his 
faith in a proposition of theological science as 
he might have declared his faith in the solution 
of one of Euclid's problems. This faith is 

[ 122] 



SAILING FAITH 

purely intellectual; it deals with facts either in 
the domain of history or of reason. Between 
this faith and the life of the person there is no 
necessary contact, for the person may go about 
his daily work unmoved by the conclusion. But 
one may say, " I believe in Jesus Christ," and 
when he says that, he has passed into another 
sphere of thought and of feeling. It is as if he 
had said that he believed in his mother, but with 
a still deeper and more sacred meaning. He is 
dealing now, not with facts or with doctrines, but 
with a person, and there is an immense difference 
between believing in a fact and believing in a 
person. When one believes in a person, he does 
not only believe with his intellect — which he 
certainly does, and therefore the facts of Christ's 
life are included within faith — but he believes 
also with his heart, with his conscience, and with 
his will, with his whole mental and spiritual per- 
sonality. The act of faith which Jesus demands 
is therefore an act of personal faith, faith be- 
tween a person and a person, and it implies the 
surrender of the one who believes to the other. 
Intellectual faith may be called beHef, but this 
faith must be called trust. 

It goes, of course, without saying that where 
any person puts his trust in another, that other 
stands to him in a certain relation — mother, 
friend, partner — and certainly no one can be 
invited to trust in Christ without regard to His 
person and His character. When Christ ap- 
pealed for faith, He appealed to men in a certain 
condition — who were sinners and who needed 
salvation ; and He appealed as one who had a 

[123] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

certain office and who had undertaken a certain 
duty — who was a Saviour, and who had been 
appointed of God to complete the great work of 
human salvation. The trust, therefore, which 
one puts in Jesus, according to the Gospel, is the 
trust of a sinner; and Jesus, Who receives that 
trust, according to the Gospel, receives it as a 
Saviour. The believer in this act commits him- 
self soul and body, without reserve and with 
entire loyalty, into the hands of Jesus, Who, on 
His part, undertakes to save him soul and body, 
without Hmit of time or circumstance. And 
the bond which unites together the sinner seek- 
ing salvation and the Saviour affording salvation 
is faith. 

Before any man is entitled to place this abso- 
lute confidence in Jesus Christ, he must have 
good reasons for beHeving that Christ as a 
Saviour is worthy of this trust, and that he on 
his part is at full liberty to trust in Christ. After 
one understands the nature of Christian faith, 
he must master the grounds upon which it rests. 
What is the foundation and the warrant of faith 
by which it is justified and upon which it stands 
invulnerable? Three answers have been given 
to this question, and each of them is true ; indeed, 
they form together one complete ground of faith. 
Of course the first ground of faith must always 
be the testimony of Holy Scripture, for no one 
can believe unless he has heard. Faith cometh 
by hearing, and what one hears is the Gospel of 
God. Holy Scripture teaches us the greatness 
and the hopelessness of our sin, the tender mercy 
and loving compassion of God, His purpose of 

[124] 



SAFING FAITH 

salvation, and the gift of Jesus Christ. Holy 
Scripture also declares unto us the arrival of the 
Son of God within our race by the Incarnation, 
His Life of Perfect Obedience and Law-keeping, 
His Passion and His Death. Holy Scripture 
also explains to us that in His Life and Death 
Jesus was a representative of the human race, 
and that by His Resurrection and Ascension and 
endless Intercession He has become our Saviour; 
and Holy Scripture lays down with the utmost 
clearness, and with overflowing grace, the excel- 
lence of Jesus as the Friend and Lord and 
Redeemer of the human soul. Finally, the voice 
of God through Holy Scripture appeals unto 
each man that he should makeno delay and have 
no hesitation, but should make haste and in- 
stantly commit himself into the hands of Christ. 
We are commanded and encouraged to believe 
throughout the length and breadth of the Bible, 
and therefore every man is justified in this trust, 
and any one refusing to trust is condemned. 

Another ground of faith can be found in the 
voice of the Church, and by this ought to be 
understood the voice of believing men through- 
out all the ages. Very often the testimony of 
the Church has been limited to her authoritative 
teaching of doctrine, when she is really working 
in an intellectual sphere, and is demanding an 
intellectual faith. The testimony of the Church 
should be extended to include her witness to the 
salvation of the human soul, through the grace 
of Jesus Christ ; and here she is speaking within 
a spiritual sphere, and is making her appeal to 
the heart. Her witness is of incalculable value, 

[ 125 ] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

and comes only short of the testimony of Holy 
Scripture. Should any one hesitate to believe 
the Gospel declared by the Prophets and Apos- 
tles in the Bible, because it is too good to be 
true, or should any one desire some human evi- 
dence from those who have made the great 
experiment of faith, then the Church comes in 
and supplements the contents of Holy Scripture. 
An innumerable company of saints of all ages 
and various intellectual creeds declare that they 
have heard the voice of God, and have gone forth 
like Abraham at His command, risking their 
whole spiritual position and an unknown future 
upon the Word of God and the Person of Jesus 
Christ. They have run this risk, and they have 
not been put to confusion ; they have rather dis- 
covered, and are prepared to declare, that the 
half had not been told them of the goodly land 
into which they have already come, and whose 
fulness stretches before them into Eternity. It 
is as if a sinful man, penitent for his past and 
longing to see the salvation of God, should stand 
at the door of God's kingdom holding in his 
hand one of the great invitations of the Evangel, 
such as " Him that cometh unto Me I will in 
no wise cast out." " Is this to be read," he says, 
" in the fulness of its meaning? and is it possible 
that such a person as I am embraced in its inten- 
tion ? " Unto this wistful soul comes one wit- 
ness after another from the gates of the kingdom, 
prophets, apostles, saints, martyrs. Each one 
comes now as an individual believer, and each 
one as he comes sets his seal upon the invitation, 
declaring that he has trusted, and that God has 

[126] 



SAVING FAITH 

been true. And at the sound of this Amen the 
fearful soul plucks up heart to believe. 

There is also a third ground of faith, which 
is sometimes exalted beyond measure by those 
who quarrel with the Catholic Creed, and re- 
garded with unjust suspicion by those who hold 
that Creed in its most intense form. It may be 
called spiritual reason, and it has its own use 
and validity. When one is considering the Gos- 
pel of God with all gravity, is it not natural that 
he should ask himself whether this Gospel be 
such as God would have given, and which He 
might have expected? whether, in fact, it is a 
worthy and becoming Gospel ? ■ There is a spir- 
itual fitness in things, and as we have been 
created with a conscience and with a reason, they 
are bound to investigate, and to pass judgment 
upon this Gospel. Should our moral sense re- 
ject the message of God because it is not such 
as could have come from Him, or could have 
been addressed to us, then, in spite of the author- 
ity of Scripture and the witness of the saints, we 
are not entitled to believe. Should our moral 
sense give hearty welcome to that Gospel be- 
cause it has revealed the heart of God, and also 
has revealed ourselves, then the witness of the 
Bible and the witness of the faith have been con- 
firmed within each man's judgment, and by each 
man's inner light. Upon these three grounds the 
witness of revelation, the witness of the Church, 
and the witness of the spiritual reason, faith 
builds her house and is strong. Afterwards she 
will obtain another ground, and lay her founda- 
tion in still greater depths and strength, because 

[127] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

by and by the soul will come for herself to know 
what others have told, and hearing will pass into 
experience. Experience is the condition of cer- 
titude, so that he who trusted on the Word of 
God and the word of his fellow-men will be able 
to say, " I know Whom I have believed," and 
then the soul will have all joy and peace in 
believing. 

Various difficulties in the matter of faith occur 
to the honest mind, and are especially harassing 
because they affect the grounds of faith ; and one 
of the chief concerns the Bible. No one can 
ignore the power of this unique Book when he 
is in search of faith, and the very criticism which 
beats upon the Bible is a tribute to its authority. 
There are minds which the Book immediately 
satisfies, and their faith builds upon it as upon a 
rock; there are minds which are puzzled and 
offended by the Bible. They are concerned 
about discrepancies in numbers and dates, they 
are horrified at certain deeds and speeches, they 
are confused about opposite views of truth in the 
Bible. Such people have even come to imagine 
that with another kind of Bible faith would have 
been easier, and that this Bible is a hindrance to 
faith. Had it been, for instance, a little histori- 
cal manual, carefully checked by some scholar, 
or a synopsis of doctrine, or a collection of moral 
sentiments ; had St. Stephen read up his Penta- 
teuch before making his great speech in the 
presence of the Sanhedrin, and had the old 
Hebrew Judges acted like St. John, and had St. 
James sent his letter to St. Paul for adjustment 
before publication, then unbelief would have 

[128] 



SAFING FAITH 

been unknown. One is amazed at a person 
thinking after this fashion, not on account of his 
want of honesty, but on account of his want of 
imagination. Were the Bible this wooden Book 
some people seem to desire, with no imperfec- 
tions of human nature, no indifference to petty 
details, no play of individuaUty, then the Bible 
would certainly cause no difficulty to-day, for it 
would long ago have gone out of circulation. 
That book could hardly be divine which was not 
even human, and no one could vex himself with 
such criticism if he grasped the nature of the 
Bible. It is not a book written in heaven and 
dropped down from the clouds^ it is the revela- 
tion of God through human experience. It is 
the likeness of the face of God drawn in the con- 
sciousness of saints ; first a few rough strokes, 
then the suggestion of a face, and then the 
brightness of God's countenance in Jesus Christ 
His Son. What concerns us is not the canvas 
and the coloring, but the expression of the face, 
which is Love. The Bible is not merely history 
and biography, it is a message, which begins in 
the early books and grows clearer and fuller and 
kinder, till it reaches its climax in the Gospels. 
There is the stalk of the com, and there is the 
chaff, which are the facts and the follies of human 
nature in Bible history; but there is also the 
grain in the ear, and that is the Gospel of God. 
It is this message of the Eternal, separated from 
its environment of Hebrew history, which is the 
warrant of faith, and the sound of this Evangel 
can be heard from almost every part of the 
Bible. 

[ 129 ] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

Faith also is often perplexed by the mysteries 
of the Christian reHgion, and people are apt to 
feel in all sincerity that Christianity is simply an 
incomprehensible and esoteric faith with doc- 
trines of fathomless depth, like the Holy Trinity, 
and the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
Atonement for Sin, and the work of the Holy 
Ghost. Faith is therefore placed beyond the 
reach of plain folk. Who can pretend, for in- 
stance, to understand the Procession of the Holy 
Ghost or the union of the Divine and Human 
in the Person of Christ? Had Christianity not 
busied herself with such hopeless enigmas, some 
one says — had Christianity been only a rule for 
life, then it would have been possible for me to 
believe. Upon the other hand, had Christianity 
been a little manual of commonplace morals 
about paying one's debts and giving to the poor, 
one had thrown the Gospel of Christ into the 
fire because it was so trivial, and so shallow. 
Every religion must go into the whole question 
of the soul and God, or else it does not deserve 
its name ; and if Christianity has dared to pierce 
to the very origin of existence, it has given a 
pledge of reality. No doubt Christianity has 
dealt with mysteries ; but it is to be remembered 
that it is not these mysteries which are the object 
of faith, but Jesus Christ Himself. It does not 
matter, in the first instance, whether one under- 
stands the Person of Christ, or the exact princi- 
ple of His atoning sacrifice, if so be that one 
receives Christ Himself by faith. His faith then 
possesses the fulness of Christ and of His sacri- 
fice together, and in the ages to come faith may 

[130] 



SAVING FAITH 

explore the goodly land at her leisure till every 
mystery has yielded its secret and speculation 
has passed into knowledge. Faith is invited to 
make her first venture in the Gospel with Jesus, 
Whose victory over sin every one can verify, and 
Whose grace no one can deny. The door for 
Christian faith is not the doctrine of the Holy 
Trinity, nor is it even the doctrine of the Cross, 
but it is the Living Christ Himself. 

Certain people also will always find a reason 
for unbelief in the divisions and controversies of 
Christendom. The witness of the saints, they 
say, is not harmonious, but is broken. If Chris- 
tian people everywhere, and at every time, had 
spoken with one voice, it would have been easy 
to believe ; but Christendom is one huge Babel, 
in which an ordinary person loses his head, and 
despairs of certainty. Certainly no one can esti- 
mate how much the wranglings of Christians 
have increased the difficulty of faith or hindered 
the conversion of the world. At the same time, 
however, it ought to be remembered that the 
lamentable disunity of Christendom is not so 
deep as might appear; for if two matters of dis- 
pute — the orders of the clergy, and the sacra- 
ments of the Church — be withdrawn, Christen- 
dom speaks with one voice. It has the same 
doctrine of God, and of Christ, and of Grace, and 
of Sin. Besides, are not these very divisions an 
impressive proof of the intensity of our reHgion ? 
because men had not contended even unto blood 
about doctrine had not these doctrines been the 
symbols for eternal truths. Faith, instead of 
being alienated by the divisions of Christendom, 

[131] 



The DOCTRINES oj GRACE 

should rather see in these divisions the inestima- 
ble value of Jesus Christ, for Whose slightest 
word men are prepared to suffer and die. In 
short, the most serious difficulties that stand in 
the way of evangelical faith would be removed 
and cease to exist if we only remembered that 
we are invited to place our faith, not in the Bible, 
not in the creeds of the Church, not in foolish 
Christian people, but in Jesus Christ Himself, in 
Whom faith can find no difficulty, in Whom 
faith will ever receive the fullest satisfaction. 

Should it be asked why it is necessary to be- 
lieve in Jesus in order to be saved, and why 
Christ cannot save the soul except upon this 
condition of faith, then the answer goes to the 
very root of the Christian religion, and indeed 
of all religion. What is sin but rebellion against 
God ? and what is its punishment but alienation 
from God? Is not the sinner, when he is found 
in a far country, so distant from God and from 
holiness that between his soul and God there is 
no fellowship? What is salvation but restora- 
tion from this far country and restoration to the 
communion of God ? There is only one way by 
which the soul can return to the Father, and that 
way is Christ Himself. When the soul is united 
to Christ so that Christ and the soul are one in 
standing, in mind, in character, and in Hfe, then 
the soul has come home again with Christ to the 
Father's House and the Father's bosom. It has 
the same communion with God which Christ 
has. This union can only be effected by faith, 
just as it is rendered impossible by unbelief. 
Faith is the bond which connects the soul with 

[ 132] 



SAFING FAITH 

Christ, so that the soul, being- now in Christ 
Jesus, is partaker of the virtue of all that He has 
done, and heir to the fulness of all that He is. 
Through faith the soul is hidden in Christ, 
through faith the soul becomes a part of Christ, 
a member of His Body under the direction and 
protection of the Head, a branch in the vine re- 
ceiving its sap and life from the stock. He that 
refuses to believe remains outside Christ ; he that 
consents to believe is in Christ Jesus, and in idea 
and in prophecy is before God as Christ Jesus 
Himself. 

The excellence of this Gospel of Faith must 
surely be plain to every mind ; for while none 
could be more profound in its issues, none could 
be more simple in its statement. It lays aside 
for the moment the problems of the past and 
future, and confines the hearer's attention to two 
persons, himself and Jesus Christ. It takes him 
as he finds himself — weak, ignorant, sinful, and 
cast down; it takes Christ as He is found in the 
Gospels — holy, strong, triumphant, and gra- 
cious. It asserts that all which the sinner needs 
is to be found in Christ, and that all which Christ 
is can be obtained by the sinner, and then it lays 
down the one reasonable and necessary condi- 
tion, that the sinner shall trust in Jesus with all 
his heart. No gospel could be more gracious, 
because on this condition of faith alone the sin- 
ner will be transported from his environment of 
sin and the entail of his sinful heredity broken, 
and he will be placed in a new environment of 
holiness, and be made one of a new creation. 
And no gospel could be more hopeful, because 

[133] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

it unites the fortunes of the sinner for time and 
eternity with those of Jesus Christ, Who is the 
Son of God, and in Whom dwells the whole ful- 
ness of the Godhead. 



[134] 



GOOD WORKS 



VIII 

GOOD WORKS 

ONE may believe that there is a unity be- 
tween faith and good works, but one 
cannot shut his eyes to the fact that 
throughout Holy Scripture there is an apparent 
conflict. If the Psalms magnify faith in God 
with all the resources of their passionate poetry, 
the same Psalms also declare that no one can 
have access unto the Eternal unless he keeps the 
law of God with all his heart and with all his 
strength. The second Isaiah may represent the 
Messiah as the sin-bearer upon whom are laid 
the iniquities of us all, but Isaiah of Jerusalem 
beseeches his people not to put their trust in sac- 
rifice, but to wash their hands and make them 
clean by all godly living. In the Book of Reve- 
lation the saints wash their robes and make them 
white in the blood of the Lamb, but at the same 
time none can enter through the gates into the 
city except those who have kept the command- 
ments of God. St. Paul devotes all the strength 
of his inspired reason to show that no man can 
be saved except through faith, and to hold up 
Abraham as a type of a believer ; but St. James, 
his fellow apostle, and of the same period, insists 
that a man is not saved by faith, but by works, 

[137 J 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

and uses Abraham as the exemplar of such 
works. And the Master Himself demands from 
beginning to end of His public ministry that peo- 
ple should believe, and seems to make every- 
thing of faith ; and yet it is Jesus who declares 
that he only who keeps His words has built his 
house upon a rock, and that in the day of the 
Great Judgment it is charity that will win the 
prize. One might take the Bible in his hand and 
show that salvation is through works, and he 
also might take the same Bible and show that 
salvation is through faith ; and it is therefore not 
wonderful that people with a bias either to the 
practical or the mystical side of rehgion should 
intrench themselves in their favorite passages 
and build up their opposite theories of the relig- 
ious life. 

This is the most reasonable excuse which can 
be offered for that exasperating and futile, but 
ever-burning controversy which rages both in 
literature and in theology, as well as in the dis- 
cussions of private life, between the comparative 
value of a correct creed and of a correct life. It 
can always be said .with a fair amount of justice 
that one who observes the commandments and 
lives cleanly, honestly, and kindly with his fellow- 
men must surely have the right of it, and be 
accepted both by God and man. This position 
will receive the approval of common-sense, and 
make a strong appeal, also, to the average con- 
science, because a righteous life is ever to be 
approved, and is indeed the only visible guar- 
antee of goodness to our fellow-men. It will 
also be urged by other people, more inclined to 

[138] 



GOOD WORKS 

the theory of things than to the domination of 
facts, that if one should hold the belief of 
the Catholic Church regarding God and Jesus 
Christ, he will surely be received into the Divine 
fellowship and be a person acceptable to God; 
and this position appeals to our respect for 
authority, and to our historic sense. It comes to 
pass, therefore, that many go out of their way 
to belittle correct thinking in matters of religion 
and to speak as if our reason had no function 
whatever in the sphere of the Divine mystery, 
and the same persons will insist unto weariness 
upon the excellence of the practical virtues and 
the moral type of character. Other persons, 
again, will have a profound suspicion of ordinary 
morality, and greatly dislike its inforcement 
upon the conscience ; and they will magnify unto 
the heavens the spiritual value of holding the 
Catholic Creed and thinking along the Hne 
of past generations. Between those opposite 
schools and their wordy warfare, the ordinary 
person is often perplexed and almost driven unto 
despair, inclined one day to trouble himself no 
more about the doctrines of the Christian faith, 
but to occupy himself entirely with the Ten 
Words of Moses, and another day to give him- 
self with all his strength to the study of the 
Nicene Creed and to leave life to take care of 
itself. 

This confusion would be dispelled, and we 
would arrive at the truth of things, if we were 
more careful to understand the meaning of the 
terms which we use as weapons. Creed and life 
are tossed to and fro in their shallowest sense, 

[139] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

and we are not at the trouble of piercing to that 
deeper meaning where both meet in perfect 
harmony. The moment that we grasp their true 
content, then the controversy is practically at an 
end, and we find that two words have been put 
asunder which God has joined together. Of 
course if one is to define creed as simply the 
intellectual belief of certain doctrines which have 
been formed in the Schools, and which are sanc- 
tioned by the authority of the Church, then it 
is plain that salvation upon such a condition 
would be a non-moral and unspiritual salvation. 
Were people to congratulate themselves upon 
being in a state of grace because they hold the 
doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and cry anathema 
upon those who deny it, then their faith would 
be a disaster to their souls, and their religion 
would be of no effect. And if any person 
should take life at its lowest reading and count 
godly living to be nothing else than the punctiH- 
ous and ostentatious discharge of certain obvious 
duties, then he would be very easily satisfied in 
religion and would simply be a somewhat shal- 
low type of Pharisee. Such a creed could save 
no man because it has no ethical force, while it 
might make a man hard and bitter, contemptu- 
ous and persecuting: such a Hfe could save no 
man because it would have no spiritual value, 
while it might make a man shallow and self- 
righteous and egotistical and vain. This creed 
receives no sanction anywhere in Holy Scripture ; 
while it is at least once dismissed with contempt 
— " the devils believe and tremble " — this life 
was estimated at its proper value by Jesus Him- 

[ 140] 



GOOD WORKS 

self when He exposed the poor make-beUeve of 
the scribes and Pharisees. 

The faith which is magnified in the Bible, and 
which is dear unto the saint, is no tepid belief, 
but a passionate conviction. It has really noth- 
ing to do with doctrines save in so far as they 
are the expression of religious experiences : it 
has to do from beginning to end with God re- 
vealed in Jesus Christ our Lord. It is the con- 
viction that God is our Father, and has loved us 
from eternity, that Christ is the Saviour of the 
human soul and has laid down His life for us 
sinners. It is the conviction that Christ is able 
to deliver a man from his sins and to re-create 
him in the image of God. But it is, above all, 
the surrender of a man's whole being into the 
hands of Christ and a loyal purpose of obedience 
unto Christ's commandments. It is not the faith 
which argues and speculates, it is the faith which 
repents and strives, which longs and loves. It 
is the faith which places a man under the domin- 
ion of the Spirit of God and under the sign of 
Christ's Cross. 

Faith in this sense — the passion of a man's 
whole nature — instead of being a mere ghost of 
the study, is the strongest principle in human 
life. Behind every brave endeavor and behind 
every lasting achievement lies faith ; for the 
men who dared these things and the men who 
brought them to perfection have first of all been 
brave believers. Abraham, when he went out 
from his own land and made the chief departure 
in human history, and also Columbus, when he 
left the Old World in search of the New, both 

[141] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

went out in faith. The apostles, when they es- 
tabhshed a new kingdom amid the ruins of the 
decadent Roman Empire, and every reformer 
that has broken the shackles of slavery and led 
men into the land of promise, alike have walked 
by faith. No one in his home and no one in 
private life ever made a sacrifice with pain to 
himself or ever rendered service with good to 
his neighbor, but was inspired and moved by 
faith. They that have not faith, and regard only 
the things which are seen, are cowards and 
selfish. They that behold the things which are 
not seen are strong and self-denying, so that the 
great periods of history have been periods of 
faith, and the ignoble periods have been periods 
when faith was dead. 

As it is faith which gives a man vision, the 
believer is therefore lifted above a squalid and 
ignoble life, and is able to endure labor and sor- 
row with patience and magnanimity. It was 
because Moses saw Him who w^as invisible that 
he despised the material civilization of Egypt 
and threw in his lot with the children of Israel, 
and by the same faith that he endured their 
gainsaying and obstinacy ; by faith the prophets 
escaped the low and ensnaring ideals of their 
own time and reached forward to the glory of 
the Messianic kingdom. Faith strengthened the 
apostles of Jesus, so that they were not over- 
come either by the glory of Greece or by the 
grandeur of Rome, but were firmly persuaded 
that the chief kingdom on earth was righteous- 
ness, peace, and joy. Just as a man who sees 
noble things, and has associated with noble 

[142] 



GOOD WORKS 

people, lives himself after the same fashion — a 
civilized man among savages, a cultured man 
among Philistines — so the religious man who 
associates with the Master regards with indiffer- 
ence the tawdry glitter of this world, and bears 
the trials of the present life with an even mind. 
And so faith produces the best of all works, a 
pure heart and a calm life. 

History affords illustrations upon the largest 
and most convincing scale of the omnipotence 
of faith. If only a strong man can believe in 
any cause with all his mind and with all his 
heart, he makes converts to the cause by the hun- 
dred thousand, and will carry that cause to vic- 
tory. No danger daunts faith, no argument 
turns aside its onslaught. The believer is a 
force, he is a partaker of the Divine strength, he 
fights along with the angels of God. Mahomet 
and his early followers created a religion and 
conquered provinces of the human race because 
they believed, and more than once a handful of 
men have changed the fortunes of an empire 
because they were strong in faith. Faith is the 
nurse of unworldly aspiration, and of splendid 
deeds which have redeemed the race from re- 
proach and made its historv to be an inspiration. 

It ought, therefore, surely to be evident that 
if faith on the ordinary level of life is capable 
of splendid achievement, there can be no limit 
to her fruitfulness in the sphere of the Christian 
religion. Faith here is devotion, not to an im- 
perfect man or to a doubtful cause, but to the 
Son of God, " Immortal Love," to Him who is 
the perfect ideal of the human soul, who is also 

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The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the spring and fulness of spiritual life. When 
one believes with all his soul in Jesus, what sacri- 
fices may not be accompHshed ! what services 
may he not render! what mercy will be in his 
soul ! what charity will be visible in his life ! His 
will be no mere deeds of ordinary morality — 
such poor efforts can be accomplished without 
faith ; his will be the rich and delicate fruit of the 
Spirit — the lessons which can only be learned at 
the feet of Jesus Christ. A new principle of life 
in his soul will appear in acts of which, in their 
spirituality and in their graciousness, morahty 
never dreams, and which have only been revealed 
and made possible by the life of Jesus Himself. 
Through the soul grafted into the stock of 
Christ the very sap of the Divine Spirit will flow, 
and the flowers will be after the fashion of the 
Gospels in their heavenly color and richness. 
Without the faith of Christ these works had not 
been possible, and the works and faith are related 
together as the tree and the fruit. They are 
good works because they are the fruit of faith, 
and faith has been vindicated by the works which 
it has produced. 

It may, of course, be urged that many good 
works have been produced without the principle 
of faith, and that it is not just to condemn the 
works which have not sprung from faith ; and 
certainly the advocate of faith should be very 
careful, in his zeal for faith, that he do no despite 
to morality. It ought to be freely granted that 
many persons who are, at least, not consciously 
in the communion of Jesus's spirit, and not a few 
who are absolute unbelievers, have led lives of 

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GOOD WORKS 

elevation and nobility. These lonely and cheer- 
less lives, whereon the sun has shined so cold- 
ly and yet which have produced pure Alpine 
flowers, are a rebuke unto persons who have 
lived in perpetual warmth, and whose souls 
ought to have abounded in flower and fruit. No 
one ought ever to plead for faith apart from 
works, nor ought he at any time to belittle the 
fruits of morality. The strength of faith is ever 
to be tested by the abundance of works, and he 
who produces no works has no faith. If there 
be such a thing as dead works — works, that is 
to say, without beauty and without fragrance — 
there is such a thing as dead faith, faith without 
force and without love. 

While, however, the possibility of certain 
works apart from faith must be allowed, it must 
also be insisted that the quality of works without 
faith can never be compared with the quality of 
the works which spring from faith. This is 
really not a matter of theology but of human 
experience, and it turns upon the character of a 
man's work. Work is not to be measured by 
time and by quantity, by its appearance and its 
effect ; it is ever to be estimated by its spirit. It 
is not the drawing and the coloring which con- 
stitute the fascination of a picture, it is the mind 
of the artist. It is not the form and show of a 
deed which constitutes its excellence, it is the 
intention of the doer. What a man is passes 
into his work, and the principle of faith, which, 
as we were saying, is fellowship with Jesus 
Christ, tinges all the works which are done by 
the man's Christ-nature, and lends unto them 

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rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

some of the beauty of the Lord's own life. Every 
day we have regard to the spirit of work, distin- 
guishing between good works which live ^nd 
bad works which are already dead. The present 
bestowed upon one by a person who does not 
love him, and has only given for selfish purposes, 
is a poor thing, which earns no gratitude and is 
thrown aside with dislike. The gift offered 
unto one by his child, who has denied himself 
in order to obtain it and bestows it for affection's 
sake, is precious beyond silver and gold, and is 
treasured with vigilant care. It matters nothing 
that the former offering was costly and shapely, 
or that the latter was of little value and uncome- 
ly to the eye ; each is really a symbol — one for a 
strange and cold heart, the other for tender and 
humble affection. We therefore conclude in the 
affairs of life that there are two kinds of works, 
living and dead, and that the difference is the 
spirit which planned and performed them. 

Are we, therefore, unreasonable in holding 
that in the religious Hfe works also fall into two 
classes, with a different value before God and 
even before man ? Was it the same thing that a 
Pharisee should tithe his mint and his anise and 
his cummin, and that a poor widow should throw 
two mites into the treasury ? Did not the honest 
heart jof the people distinguish between the two ? 
and is not God greater than our hearts and 
knoweth all things ? Was it the same thing that 
Simon the Pharisee asked Jesus to a feast for 
custom's sake, if not for meaner reasons, and 
that Matthew the publican also asked Him to a 
feast for love's sake and in the gratitude of his 

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GOOD WORKS 

soul? Is it the same thing that a man should 
obey the demands of the moral law for the sake 
of his reputation, and the opinion of his neigh- 
bor, and the comfort of his life, and the obtaining 
of glory, and that he should keep the same law, 
not in the letter but in the spirit, with an over- 
flowing measure of obedience because it is the 
law of his Heavenly Father and the command- 
ment of his Saviour? Is there anything less at- 
tractive and less effectual for high ends than 
cold and calculated morality? Is there anything 
more winsome and inspiring than self-forgetful 
and self-sacrificing devotion? 

When Christianity makes works to be depend- 
ent upon faith and its constant outcome, our 
religion not only delivers its disciples from the 
tyranny of legal bondage, but also affords the 
most certain guarantee of high living. If the 
Christian seems to leave Moses and the Ten 
Words, it is to find the Ten Words deepened 
and spiritualized in the Sermon on the Mount, 
and to discover in Jesus not only a Lawgiver, 
but also an Exemplar. If the motive of fear be 
relaxed and disappear, then the Christian is not 
left without a salutary stimulus, for love takes 
the place of fear, and he obeys because he loves, 
till perfect love casts out fear. If for the mo- 
ment he suffers no longer the scourge of an 
angry conscience, he is strengthened inwardly 
unto obedience by the Spirit of his Lord. Good 
works are no longer now a task and a perform- 
ance — they are a devotion and a fruit. He is 
not a servant fulfilling his appointed tale of 
work, he is a child doing his father's will in his 

[147] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

father's house. Good works in all their forms 
are now the expression of his gratitude, and the 
harvest of his believing soul. 

By this doctrine of faith and good works two 
persons are condemned, and the first is the man 
who professes to produce works, but confesses 
that he has no faith. Upon the whole he is apt 
to be high and lifted up, congratulating himself 
upon his strength and upon his independence, 
who has been able to do all these things without 
Jesus Christ. The measure of his moral success 
is in reality the reflection upon his unbelief. He 
has been careful to pay all the debts which he 
owed to trifling creditors ; he ignores and refuses 
to pay his debts to his chief Creditor, who is 
God. He gives himself some trouble to show 
respect to his fellow men according to the claims 
which they have upon him of honor or of char- 
ity ; but one Man he selects for rejection and 
indignity, and that is the Man who laid down 
His life upon the cross that he might be saved. 
He takes credit to himself because no good cause 
has ever appealed in vain to him, and no high 
ideal has ever been unadmired by his soul, and 
yet it is this very man who passes by the invita- 
tion of God's kingdom, and will have none of the 
cross of Christ. What value in character shall 
we assign to the soul which admires all spiritual 
beauty except the beauty of Christ, which gives 
welcome to all love except the perfect love of 
God, which is ready to do every good work ex- 
cept the chief work of all, and that is faith in 
Christ? 

The other person condemned by this doctrine 

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GOOD WORKS 

is he who professes to beHeve, and who knows 
that he is not doing the works. Could there be 
any more ghastly irony than a human being de- 
claring his faith in God and refusing to keep 
His laws ; calling himself by the name of Christ, 
and denying Christ's cross ; accepting his fellow 
men as his brethren in Christ, and not doing 
them even a stranger's service? How can he 
have learned to call God Father whom he has 
never seen, when he does not treat his fellow 
man as a brother, whom he has seen ? How can 
his sins have been forgiven of God — sins which 
were as scarlet and red like crimson — when he 
will not forgive his neighbor the trifling trans- 
gressions of human life? how can he be partaker 
of the Divine grace, whose poverty-stricken soul 
is not bearing the scanty fruits of common mo- 
rality? Can it be in the reason of things that an 
ungrateful, unloving, dishonest, and unrighteous 
person is saved? And when we ask the ques- 
tion, it answers itself: Without works there is 
no faith ; and this man is walking in a vain show, 
and feeding his soul with wind. His exposure 
in some moral crisis of life, when, forsaken of 
the grace which he has abused, he falls into 
gross sin, or when, in the light of eternity, his 
refuges of lies and coverings of hypocrisy will 
be burned up, is going to be one of the most 
awful acts of Divine judgment. 



[149] 



SANCTIFICATION 



IX 

SANCTIFICATION 

ACCORDING to the Catholic faith, the 
rehgious Hfe has one supreme moment 
never to be repeated nor annulled, and 
afterwards it has a varied history whose chap- 
ters often repeat themselves, and sometimes 
annul one another. The conscious moment 
occurs when one who has been frivolous, unbe- 
lieving, and worldly is arrested and bethinks 
himself — when the mist rolls away in which he 
has been w^alking as in a dream and he sees the 
austere and beautiful reality of the spiritual 
world — when he is moved by a sudden and ir- 
resistible influence to reverse his course and to 
fling himself with utter abandonment into a new 
and undreamt of future. The veil may be 
lifted by a book, or by a picture, or by a con- 
versation, or by a silence, as it most commonly 
is lifted by the gospel declared in Holy Scripture 
or in public preaching. The effect is vision, con- 
version (and regeneration.) The history begins 
when a man who has come to himself and to 
God sets himself to cultivate the religious life 
under the guidance and the grace of the Holy 
Ghost. And his progress from that day in 
knowledge and in holiness is sanctification. 
As sanctification is the re-creation of the soul 

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7he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

in a nobler shape, its first necessity is a Perfect 
Type, and this type is Christ Jesus. Within the 
recesses of our mind we have got an idea of 
physical beauty which the ordinary person is 
neither able to describe nor to draw. It is an 
endowment of which he is not always conscious, 
a piece of property which he has not yet pos- 
sessed. One day he enters a gallery and stands 
before the Venus of Milo or the Apollo Belvidere. 
In that instant he is conscious of his ideal, and 
has recognized that perfection which all along 
has been in his mind. After the same fashion 
we have in our soul an ideal of spiritual beauty 
which we could not place upon paper, and to 
which we ourselves have never attained. Occa- 
sionally it is dimly thrown out before us in the 
life of a friend ; we recognize nobility of which 
we have dreamed, incarnate in this man. No 
one, however, has exhibited in his character 
the absolute perfection which our souls seek 
after, and would desire to see. Every good 
man in Holy Scripture or in history is a hint 
of the supreme Goodness, an inspiration for our 
imagination, a prophecy of a coming revelation. 
As the worthies of the Bible pass before us, each 
one at once attracts and disappoints us, because 
there is in him some trait of goodness, in him 
also some grave defect. Moses and David, 
Samuel and Jonathan, Isaiah and Jeremiah, 
amaze us in turn by their moral vision, their 
spiritual poetry, their chivalrous heroism, their 
strong integrity, their gracious words, their 
patient suffering. They also leave us dissat- 
isfied by their human faults and glaring imper- 

[154] 



SANCTIFICATION 

fection. They themselves look forward to a day 
which is to come, and imagine a Face which 
shall satisfy the soul. Isaiah, in his 53d chap- 
ter, and David, in the 72d Psalm, with eager, 
reverent mind, depict the Man which is to be, 
and bid men wait for his coming. With less than 
this man they may not be content; when this 
Man appears, nothing will remain to be desired. 
Throughout the world, in sacred literature and 
also in secular, scattered fragments of a perfect 
figure can be found, and then when Christ ap- 
peared it was discovered. According to uni- 
versal opinion, from which there is no dissension, 
and never indeed can be, Jesus fulfils our ideal 
of the Perfect Man. 

It were possible to imagine a human type 
which would be perfect but provincial; it is a 
part of Christ's excellence that His perfection 
is universal. The son of a Jewish maiden, we 
do not think of Him as a Jew; He is a Man 
representing the human race. Born in the first 
century, we do not speak of Him as a Man of 
His time, because he is a Man of all time. 
Living within the circumstances of a narrow 
life, we do not think of Him as a carpenter or 
as a rabbi. We think of Him as above all 
circumstances and doing everlasting work. We 
should find it impossible to describe His char- 
acter, because we should have to include every 
single high quality, and to state them at their 
highest point. One hardly limits him to man- 
hood, because one feels that in Him was also 
combined the excellency of the other sex, so 
that man and woman meet and are harmonized 

[155I 



ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

in Him. His character is not one of the colors 
into which light is split, He is rather Light itself, 
which gives its tint to every flower, to the sea, 
and to the sky. For all men, therefore, and all 
women, of every nation and of every age, and of 
every condition. He is the pattern of perfection. 

His elevation above the limitations of His 
time and nation make Him an eternal type. 
Pictures even of the great masters have their 
vogue, coming into favor, and going out of 
favor, like a fashion. The picture indeed re- 
mains the same, but our idea of what we want 
and of what we admire changes. This picture 
only is not subject to the caprice of moral 
fashion, since the only change is in its growing 
appreciation and its deeper understanding. 
There have been many schools in Christianity, 
but all of them have adored Christ. There have 
been many schools of unbelief, but none of them, 
save the most unworthy, have dared to criticise 
Christ. He is new in every age, and He be- 
longs to every age, and with every age He is 
more certainly accepted as the brightness of 
humanity. 

Against Christ, however, as the type of the 
soul it may be urged that He is too high and is 
lifted beyond our attainment. Is it not a dis- 
ability in our Christian faith that it should 
propose unto every Christian, however imperfect, 
the imitation of Jesus, and insist that he shall 
never be content till he is like his Lord ? If this 
be a fault, it is a fault of nobility, and not of 
poverty. What finer tribute could be paid to 
any religion than this, that it will look at nothing 

[156] 



SANCTIFICATION 

but the ideal of perfection, and never rest till that 
be realized in the life of its humblest member ? 
It is better to fail aiming at the highest than to 
succeed aiming at the lowest; and in the distant 
perfection of Christ is the inspiration of the 
Christian life. For St. John and for St. Paul it 
was the joy of their hearts that they had never 
reached unto the height of Jesus, although they 
had ever been climbing, and that with every 
year to come there would open out to them un- 
imagined summits of holiness, so that they 
would still be only drawing nearer to Christ, 
whom no man could overtake on this side of the 
grave. It is the very penalty and promise of 
our life that with us everything approximates, 
but never touches, perfection. No one has ever 
seen a straight line; it is but a form of speech, 
or a basis of calculation. All that we see, all that 
we feel, are but essays at absolute beauty, truth, 
and love. What we see is higher than what we 
do, what we imagine is more than we see, and 
yet there remaineth what has not entered into 
the heart of man. The glory of Christian sancti- 
fication is twofold: that we never can in this 
world rise to the perfection of Christ, but that 
we may ever be growing into His likeness from 
youth to old age. 

If the first word in sanctification be Perfection, 
the second is Revelation, for this perfection must 
be shown unto our eyes, and it has been so made 
manifest in the mirror of the Gospels. For a 
moment one had desired a grander medium, and 
had been inclined to ask that the character of 
Jesus should have been made known to us by the 

[157] 



7he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

mind of angels, or by the trained thinkers of the 
human race. The next moment one sees his 
mistake, and is thankful for the biographers of 
Jesus. What was required in this case was not 
exposition by supernatural intellect or by great 
genius, but simply honest and loyal minds which 
would hold up the glass to the life and person 
of the Lord. It had been an unspeakable mis- 
fortune if, instead of the simple annals of the 
Gospels, we had had learned studies of Jesus's 
life. We had then seen the Master as men im- 
agined Him, tricked out with their dainty 
phrases and tawdry tributes of respect. As it 
is we see the Master as He spoke and as He 
worked before men who did not understand Him 
and could not then appreciate Him, but who loved 
Him and reflected Him in their love. We may 
be certain as we read the Gospels that we are 
looking on the Face of Christ, and that we know 
what He was and what He is. 

For this revelation the Gospels are absolutely 
necessary, and can never be superseded ; for 
although the Christian may come to know Christ 
in his heart, he can never afford to lose Christ in 
the Gospels. It is there that we first see Him, 
and it is there that we first understand Him. 
We had never known the Christ of the heavenly 
places unless we had known the Christ of Galilee, 
and we only know to-day what the Christ of the 
heavenly places is because we know what the 
Christ of Galilee was. It is best that every dis- 
ciple should have the likeness of the Lord hang- 
ing upon the inner wall of his heart, but it is 
necessary that he should ever verify that like- 

[158] 



SANCTIFICATION 

ness by the one which he possesses in the four 
Gospels. Had we not the authoritative portrait 
of the Gospels, as time went on strange likenesses 
of Christ might be created and come into fashion, 
and Christians be formed after a type which 
would be no longer the character of Jesus Christ, 
but the creation of a later age. There has been 
such a thing as an unreal and fantastic Christ, 
who has been preached and held up for imita- 
tion, and against this false and dangerous mys- 
ticism there is no check or remedy save the face 
of Christ in the mirror of the gospel. 

Among the various guides to sanctification the 
most reliable and effectual is the Life of Christ; 
because, while every other is local and represents 
a school, this book contains the length and 
breadth of Christian perfection. A Puritan is 
satisfied with the Pilgrim's Progress, and a 
Roman with the Imitation of Christ; and each 
may appreciate up to a certain degree the school 
of the other, but both find themselves at one in 
the Gospels. If, however, the Gospels are to 
have their due effect, and one is to see in their 
pages the very face of Jesus, he must come 
without prejudice and without preconceptions — 
in fact, as St. Paul would say, *' with unveiled 
face." There is a constant danger that one 
should have made up his mind as to what Jesus 
ought to do and what Jesus ought to say, and 
then readjust the whole Life of Jesus, with 
subtle interpretations and artificial glosses, to fit 
in with his own mind. An ingenuous faith will 
accept the Lord as He appears in the picture of 
the Evangelists, being prepared for any surprises 

[159] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

of goodness, and being always convinced that 
Jesus's Life is Life in Excelsis. Especially is it 
dangerous to lay down in one's mind any prin- 
ciples about the miraculous, and to take it for 
granted, as a modern person is apt to do, that 
the miraculous is impossible. Nothing can be 
impossible with Jesus, who has • brought the 
power and grace of Deity within the narrow 
circumstances of human life. Far more wonder- 
ful than the healing of lepers and the raising of 
the dead is His own personal life, with its air 
of Heaven, its unfailing resources of grace, its 
irresistible influence upon human character. 
One reason for limited and provincial Chris- 
tianity, a Christianity with narrow vision and 
one-sided character, is that Christians have gone 
to learn holiness everywhere except in the Gos- 
pels. The condition of a rich and full Chris- 
tianity will be the study of the Divine and per- 
fect life revealed to us by the Evangelists, and 
allowed to have its unfettered play upon our own 
souls and lives. 

The third principle in the doctrine of sanctifi- 
cation is Contemplation, and it would be wise for 
Christians to remind themselves constantly that 
there are two methods by which any person can 
become like another, just as there are two 
methods by which an artist can be the disciple 
of a great master. We may set ourselves with 
care and perseverance to reproduce our friend's 
manner, to echo his tone of voice, and to repeat 
his actions in detail We can attain such skill 
in this study that strangers will be irresistibly 
reminded of our hero by our pronunciation of a 

[i6o] 



SANCTIFICATION 

word, or by a sudden gesture, or by the repetition 
of an idea. This is imitation, a method which 
is sanctioned in Art as often as a pupil copies 
from a picture, sanctioned also in literature as 
often as a student masters a great writer's style, 
and sanctioned in life with frequent good results 
as often as a young person follows exactly in 
the steps of a good man. 

There is, however, another method, which is 
more spontaneous and more effectual, wherein 
one simply lives as much as he can in his 
friend's company, and leaves his mind open to 
his influence, and braces himself to seek after 
the same ends. Gradually, and without con- 
scious effort, the poorer nature changes into the 
likeness of the higher, so that every person can 
recognize that a change has taken place, and 
that it has been a regeneration; but the change 
is recognized, not by sound of voice or trick of 
manner, but by the spirit of the life and the new 
shape of the soul. The subject of this change 
will have no self-consciousness, and will not 
know that his face is shining; he will rather be 
more painfully convinced than ever of his unlike- 
ness to the friend whom he reveres, while all the 
world has seen him approximating to that like- 
ness every day. This method is contemplation, 
which is not to imitate but to behold Christ. 

Contemplation has two advantages over imita- 
tion, and the first is inwardness, for he that 
contemplates knows Christ better than he who 
imitates. One person may set himself to study 
a picture, reading what he can find about the 
age and school, about the drawing and color of 

[i6i] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the work, till he could give its description and 
its history. Another may sit alone with that 
picture, without a book and without a note, for 
the same space of time, and allow the picture 
to imprint itself upon his soul. The former could 
write the story of the picture, the latter possesses 
the picture in the spirit. The saint is not simply 
a man who could relate the biography of Christ 
from end to end, and at every turn could discover 
a rule for his daily actions, till the Life of the 
Lord had passed into dates and regulations. He 
is rather a man who has been overcome by the 
excellent beauty of the Lord's face, and has 
spent his time in admiration, so that afterwards 
the reflection of that beauty still lingers on his 
own character and life. Contemplation also 
has this advantage, that it never suggests the 
bondage of conscious Art, but always allows the 
perfect freedom of the soul. There is a vast 
distinction between one who copies a master 
and one who belongs to the school of the master. 
The copy of a picture is exact in details, and 
may often be rendered with great skill; but it 
remains even in the case of the most pious 
copyist a representation of alien work. The dis- 
ciple does not copy any of the master's work, 
but he paints in the master's spirit. His sub- 
ject may be different from any which the master 
has chosen, but his treatment of the subject will 
be after the master's mind, so that you do not 
say, " This is what the master first did," but 
*' This is how that master would have done.'* 
He has retained his own individuality, and has 
done more homage to the master. 

I 162 J 



SANCTIFICATION 

It seems an excellent rule to say what Jesus 
says, and do what Jesus did ; but this is really 
a mechanical idea of sanctification, and would 
keep the disciple of Jesus in bondage all his days. 
Between the details of Jesus's life and of our 
own there is the difference between the east and 
the west, the difference between the first century 
and the nineteenth, the difference between two 
civilizations. One dares to say that there are 
words of Jesus which, as they stand, we could 
not use, and works of Jesus which we ought not 
to do. It is not for us to reproduce the form 
of Galilean life, nor even to draw too close 
an analogy between its circumstances and our 
environment. It is ours to catch the spirit of 
the Lord and to enter into His mind, so that 
the love and righteousness which inspire every 
word and deed of Christ may pass as a subtle 
essence into the body of our daily life. And 
so it will come to pass that in our modern Hfe 
Jesus Himself will live afresh, and we shall bring 
Him nearer to a faithless world. 

Another principle of sanctification is Progres- 
sion, which means that we cannot grow into the 
likeness of the Lord in a brief space, but that 
we must advance from stage to stage. It is 
unfortunate for plain people who do not care 
for argument or nice distinctions that there has 
been so much trouble made over the idea of 
Christian perfection. It is exasperating, on the 
one hand, that a believer in Jesus Christ should 
almost resent the suggestion that he can over- 
come his sins and trample them under foot; and 
it becomes an irony when, on occasion, he will 

[163] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

refuse to sing the words at the end of the Te 
Deum, that God would keep us this day from 
sin, upon the ground that this is impossible, and 
is foolhardy to ask. Does it prove inevitable 
shallowness of character and a vain mind to 
believe that we can rid ourselves of sin in the 
fellowship of Jesus Christ? and is it an example 
of humility, and even of reverence for the Lord, 
that we should groan all our days under this 
body of death ? Can no Christian say with 
truth, " Thanks be unto God who has given me 
the victory " ? and if he says so, is he of neces- 
sity a weakling or a boaster ? It is also only less 
trying to be told that certain people have come 
to perfection and are no longer conscious of sin ; 
and the irony is still keener in this case when 
they alone have perceived their own perfection, 
and any one of their neighbors could point out 
their sins. Can the re-creation of the soul be 
so rapid and slight an achievement ? Can the 
height of Christian character be so easily and 
surely climbed ? This perfection must be on 
a very narrow and poverty-stricken scale — the 
scale not of an oak which groweth slowly to 
its majestic proportions, but of a gourd which 
cometh up in a night. What occurs to the plain 
person who has no theory, but is only possessed 
with an overwhelming idea of the excellence of 
Christ, is that sanctification will advance on a 
series of levels, one rising above the other. Each 
level, as we look at it from below and toil to 
reach it, will seem perfection, because it is the 
complete face of Christ as we have seen it from 
our standpoint. When we have completed a 

[164] 



SANCTIFICATION 

fresh ascent, our vision will have grown ; we 
shall then discover fresh imperfection in our- 
selves and unsuspected beauty in Christ. Again 
we shall be inspired with adoration, again we 
shall be smitten with .dissatisfaction — adoration 
of the new glory, dissatisfaction with our own 
defects. We shall brace ourselves for another 
ascent which is to be the last ; and again we shall 
be disappointed with that disappointment where- 
in are mixed both joy and sorrow. It has been 
said that the final ascent will be the hour of 
death, and that then the soul will pass alto- 
gether into the likeness of the Lord; but on this 
point Catholic doctrine has not "agreed, and the 
Christian reason must have her own difficulty. 
One believes that deliverance from the body 
and the open vision of the Lord will strike dead 
within us the remains of sin, both the desire and 
the habit. One hopes also that the first day of 
the heavenly life will only be the beginning 
of another progress which shall know no end, 
wherein with every age we shall again ascend, 
following the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, 
while He ever moves before us in new revela- 
tions of holiness. 

The last great word in this doctrine is Inspira- 
tion, without which indeed there could be no 
hope of sanctification. Between formal and real 
holiness the difference really is that the one is 
of the Spirit of God, and the other is of the will 
of man. It is possible by sheer force of will to 
abandon certain sins and to copy certam virtues ; 
by sheer force of will to walk at a distance in 
the steps of Christ, and to approximate to the 

[165] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

outer form of His life. This is a laborious effort 
without beauty and without fruit — a carved tree, 
not a living plant. Growing and fruitful holiness 
is the outcome of Jesus's spirit living and work- 
ing within the soul. It matters not how much 
the student may love the master's work, or how 
patiently he may reproduce it on the canvas, 
there will ever be something which cannot be 
designed, present in the original picture and 
absent in the reproduction. Were the master 
to stand beside the pupil and ply him with rules, 
were he even to take his hand and guide it in 
the stroke, it would not avail. One thing only 
would serve, that the very spirit of the master 
should pass into his pupil, till he saw with his 
master's eye and wrought with his master's 
hand, till he was lost and absorbed in his master. 
While Jesus was with His disciples they were 
pupils in His school, and we envy them their 
privilege. He pointed out their faults, and 
showed them what they ought to have done, and 
yet they failed, and came short in almost every 
point of the religious life. By and by He 
passed from sight, and then He returned as a 
spiritual influence to speak not in their ears but 
in their souls, to guide not their lives but their 
minds. They were not now simply instructed — 
they were also inspired, and inspiration is as 
much beyond instruction as the soul is more than 
the body. It has frequently happened that a 
husband and wife have lived together for a quar- 
ter of a century, and the husband has been filled 
with devotion and admiration; but it was after 
his wife departed, and was now a spiritual pres- 

[i66] 



SANCTIFICATION 

ence in his heart, that he began to think and to 
live so exactly after her model that the world 
noticed the change, and were reminded at every 
turn of her who, unseen, was still living. The 
vision of perfection would not avail the Christian 
soul without the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, 
by which that vision is indeed afforded, and by 
which it is turned into reality. For the soul is 
like the sensitive film, and the Lord in the 
Gospels is the perfect beauty; but the medium 
of reproduction, without which all would be 
vain, is the light of the sun, and the light of 
the sun is the Holy Spirit of the Lord. 



[167] 



I'he PERSEVERANCE of the SAINTS 



X 

The PERSEVERANCE of the SAINTS 

THIS doctrine has been described by the 
greatest of Puritan theologians as the 
" very salt of the covenant of grace," 
and it is clothed in words of majestic sound, but 
it has had two readings, one of which is neither 
worthy nor reasonable. People have been apt to 
imagine that by this perseverance is simply in- 
tended that however a man may live, and what-, 
ever he may do, if only he has been the object 
of the Divine love and has accepted the offer of 
the Divine mercy, he will be kept from destruc- 
tion in this present life and afterwards will 
receive the heavenly kingdom. Certain in ages 
past, and some possibly at this present, have 
persuaded themselves that they are free from 
the obligations of the moral law, and that they 
are at liberty to sin without punishment, because, 
as they believe, their names are written in the 
Book of Life and they are the favorites of the 
Eternal. Under no circumstances can they be 
cast out or finally be lost, since the doors of hell 
are for ever barred against them and the doors 
of heaven are ever opened for their entrance. No 
deed of theirs, they would argue, can reverse 
the decrees of God or baffle His purposes, and 
the very grace of God may become to them the 

[171] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

minister and safeguard of sin. Were this the 
doctrine of perseverance, it would be difficult to 
imagine one more absolutely unreasonable, since 
it would make the choice of God an arbitrary 
caprice wherein God has elected a person for no 
reason, and would not afterwards change His 
choice even for the strongest reason. Nor could 
one imagine a doctrine more thoroughly im- 
moral, because it not only tolerates wickedness, 
but bestows upon it the absolute favor of the 
Almighty, so that a man has been selected to 
fulfil the lusts of the flesh and to escape their 
punishment. Had this been the doctrine of per- 
severance, then it would have been a singular 
curse to all men who believed it, and long ago 
would have been cast out of the Christian faith 
with loathing and contumely. 

This doctrine can be best understood in the 
light of its own terms, since the perseverance 
which is mentioned therein is the perseverance 
of the saints, and is never to be understood to 
be the perseverance of sinners. Among various 
desires which visit the human heart from time 
to time surely one of the worthiest is the passion 
for holiness. There come to us moments when 
we are ashamed of our sins, and desire to cast 
them off; other moments when we wrestle with 
sin and with principalities and powers of the 
evil world ; moments when we are beaten and 
gravely discouraged in the spiritual conflict; 
other moments when we overcome and our 
hearts are filled with pure gladness. Again and 
again this question comes to one's mind as the 
day of Hfe goes on and draws to its close, ** Am I 

[172] 



7he PERSEVERANCE of the SAINTS 

to be beaten or victorious ? and in the end shall 

I attain unto the heights of perfection in Christ 
Jesus after which I have striven, or shall I come 
short to the breaking of my heart ? " It is a 
question which deserves an answer, and it is 
answered in this doctrine. Some aims of life 
may not be attained: if a man will hunger for 
riches or for glory, he may be miserably dis- 
appointed. Some aims are bound to be attained ; 
and if a man will make it the chief purpose and 
effort of his life to achieve holiness, he shall not 
be put to confusion either in this world or in 
that which is to come. What he has loved and 
striven after, what he has thought of in the quiet 
of the night, and in the midst of the day's busi- 
ness, as beyond all gain of this world shall be 
granted unto him, and granted beyond all that 
he ever could have imagined. Whosoever fails, 
the saint shall succeed, and whosoever misses his 
inheritance, it shall not be the saint in light. 
This is the perseverance of the saint: it is the 
triumph of spiritual character. 

The strong grounds on which this doctrine 
rests are various in their character, but they 
conspire together in their effect, and the first 
is the purpose of the Eternal. No one can study 
the physical world with any intelligence and not 
observe that from the beginning in the lowest 
and most helpless forms of life up to the consum- 
mation of physical creation in man, there has 
been a sustained progress towards perfection. 
As often as we see absolute imperfection in 
nature we conclude either that there has been 
some catastrophe or that there has been some 

[173] 



T:he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

arrestment. We expect to see at every stage 
a temporary and modified perfection, and that 
we accept as the prophecy of a final and com- 
plete perfection. Perfection first in progress and 
then in completion is a law of the physical 
universe. When we pass into the spiritual 
universe, we are surely right in judging that 
the same law will hold good according to its 
new circumstances and with its new subjects. 
The soul may be at first only a rude form of 
spiritual life, but as time comes and goes and 
the agencies of the spiritual world play upon 
it, the obedient and receptive soul will surely 
advance from stage to stage until it stands 
complete according to the type of its kind. If 
it is the case that the energy of God in the outer 
world working through long periods of time has 
never flagged and has not failed of its intention, 
then is there any one who can believe that the 
same energy directed to yet higher ends and 
trusted in by far higher creatures, will fail and 
grow weary before their desire and the mind of 
God have been fulfilled. Whom He called, 
them He justified ; whom He justified, them He 
also glorified, is the certain and irresistible evo- 
lution of grace. 

Another ground for this doctrine is the life of 
our Master, since it is ever to be remembered 
that according to the theory of Christianity a 
man's future hinges not upon his own attain- 
ments but upon the achievement of His Lord. 
No one has reached the Christian standpoint — 
the standpoint, that is to say, of St. Paul and 
St. John — who can regard the agony and victory 

[174] 



rhe PERSEVERANCE of the SAINTS 

of our Lord as isolated and personal. When 
He came, it was not for Himself but for His 
Church ; and when He resisted the enemy and 
trampled him under foot, it was for His Church ; 
and when He died upon the cross, it was still 
for His Church; and when He rose from the 
dead, He rose again for the Church; and when 
He ascended into the heavenly places, the Church 
ascended also ; and now when He offers His 
ceaseless intercession, it is as the High Priest 
of the people for whom He has entered within 
the veil and whom He represents. The lot of 
the Church and the lot of Jesus Christ are inex- 
tricably and eternally bound up together, and 
what holds good of the Church as a whole is 
true also of each one of her members. The 
Christian idea is that the disciples and the Lord 
are so entirely one, that in the history of the 
disciples the history of the Lord is repeated. In 
St. Paul or St. John or the most obscure and 
weakest of all the saints Christ is tempted of the 
Evil One and overcomes: Christ endures the 
trials of this present life and is not cast down, 
Christ obeys the will of God and finishes the 
work God gave Him to do: Christ is crucified 
unto sin and lives unto righteousness. He en- 
dured great travail and has won His recom« 
pense, which is to reap the fruit of His triumph 
in innumerable human lives which He guards 
and sanctifies, which He will present blameless 
unto the Father. When the disciple desires to 
strengthen his heart in the conflict of the soul, 
it is not wise for him to look overmuch within, 
and to take account of his inherent weakness, nor 

[175] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

is it wise for him to look overmuch without upon 
the massed forces of evil and to allow his imag- 
ination to be darkened. His faith may look 
without, but it at the same time ought to look 
upward, nor rest till it has established itself in 
the very midst of the throne and upon the Lamb 
who once was slain. The hope of the Christian's 
ultimate victory and sure perfection is drawn 
from the Resurrection and the Ascension of 
Jesus Christ, His session upon the throne and 
His unceasing mediation. Were the poorest and 
feeblest disciple who had ever trusted and loved 
his Lord to be left a prey unto sin and be caught 
finally in the bondage of the Evil One, then the 
fruit of Christ's victory on Calvary had been 
taken from His hands, and the crown of gold 
had been replaced again by the crown of thorns. 
" None shall pluck you out of my hand," said the 
Lord and Good Shepherd to His dismayed and 
helpless flock; and since He said that word His 
hand has been pierced and has received the 
sceptre of the Cross, whereby He has obtained 
all power in heaven above, and on the earth 
beneath, and in the dark places which are under- 
neath the earth. Should one of His disciples 
miss the everlasting city, and be left in the outer 
darkness, then has this strong promise of the 
Lord been a thing of naught — a word which 
Satan had torn in pieces and flung in His face 
— and the power conferred upon Him in virtue 
of His Sacrifice had been only an empty show, 
a power which could be flouted and brought into 
contempt. Christ Himself declared plainly that 
far weal or woe He and they who trusted in Him 

[176] 



The PERSEVERANCE of the SAINTS 

would stand together, so that they could not be 
in the darkness and He in the light, nor He upon 
the throne and they in the prison when the end 
of all things has come, and every man is judged 
according to the law of God. " Where I am," 
He declared, '* there ye shall be also, and because 
I live ye shall also live." Wherefore if you look 
closely into this matter, the perseverance of the 
saints is another word for the perseverance of 
Jesus Christ. 

The hope of perseverance also builds her home 
in the love of God, because faith remembers that 
God is not only our Creator and our Governor, 
but that He also is our Father. Between a 
master and a father there is one great difference, 
which affords strong consolation to the believer, 
A master may be kind and considerate, but it 
is not expected of him that he should endure 
stupidity and incapacity beyond a point, and no 
master would be justified in condoning moral 
faults and shifty character. But a father, he 
must bear with the children who call him by this 
name, and who by the very word compel his 
patience. It is not possible for him to chide 
them as the world does, or to cast them out 
from his home as an unprofitable servant is 
discharged by his master. They are his whom 
he has brought into the world,' and who bear 
his likeness, to whom his heart is knit, and 
whom he is bound to succor. With what 
thoughtfulness and foresight, with what gentle- 
ness and consideration, does a father deal with 
the failings of his children, encouraging them 
in every good endeavor, tenderly complaining 

[177] 



ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

of their wilful faults, covering over their inevi- 
table infirmities and looking forward with ex- 
pectation to a day of more perfect manhood. 
And God is the Father of our souls, in whom 
there is no variableness neither shadow of turn- 
ing, in whom all the wisdom and patience of a 
frail earthly parent are raised to their supreme 
height and are glorified. Is not the whole sys- 
tem of providence a series of selected and regu- 
lated means by which the souls of God's chil- 
dren may be carved and shaped after the likeness 
of Christ ? God's chastisements are represented 
in Holy Scripture as the evidence of His love 
and the instrument of holiness, and even His hot 
anger is the fire whereby the dross is cleansed 
away from human lives. He cannot be angry 
for ever with His children because He is a 
Father, and, according to the prophet Hosea — 
a prophet whose heart was made tender unto the 
breaking by the sorrows of his own home — the 
heart of the Eternal repents even of His just 
judgments, so that it cries aloud as in an agony 
of affection. God remembered when Israel was 
a child and He called His son out of Egypt, 
when He taught Ephraim to walk, holding His 
children by their arms as a mother her little one. 
Very greatly had Israel sinned, and very far 
short had Israel come of the glory of God ; but 
Israel was not a stranger nor a servant; Israel 
could not be dismissed for righteousness's sake; 
Israel could not be forgotten for love's sake: 
** How shall I give thee up, Ephraim, how shall 
I deliver thee, Israel ? . . . Mine heart is 
turned within Me, My repentings are kindled 

[178] 



The PERSEVERANCE of the SAINTS 

together." The wisdom and the love of God are 
pledged unto the believer, and the perseverance 
of the saints is bound up with the Fatherhood of 
God. 

According to the Bible, the saints have also 
greatly strengthened their hearts in the hope of 
victory, because they are firmly persuaded that 
their souls and God are bound together in a 
covenant which cannot be broken. This convic- 
tion is one of the secret things of the religious 
life which cannot be judged by reason and 
cannot be proved unto the outer world. As a 
man and woman may be knit together m ties 
of affection which are not known unto their 
neighbors, nor, indeed, can be declared, but 
which are the strongest bond on earth, so is it 
with the believer and God. The Eternal has 
spoken to him with a clear and unmistakable 
voice, and he has obeyed the call of God. What 
God asked of him was trust, and trust he has 
given. What God promised to him was His 
good-will, and this good-will God will surely give. 
While strangers seek to find God in the designs 
of creation and in the march of history, this man 
knows God within his own soul, and there holds 
communion with Him. There have been many 
passages between him and God wherein God has 
complained of him and he has complained to 
God, wherein God has rebuked him and he has 
repented at the feet of God, wherein God has 
comforted him and he has said, " My God ! " As 
the years passed this friendship has become as 
the marriage bond, and the saint no more ex- 
pects that it could be broken than a wife could 

[179] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

believe that her husband would cast her off. 
Through the Old Testament the prophets re- 
turned again and again to the hope of the 
covenant, and declared that the mountains might 
depart and the hills be removed, but the covenant 
of peace between God and His people would 
never be broken. In the New Testament Jesus 
takes up the same beautiful conception in the 
upper room when He declares that the Sacra- 
ment of His Body and Blood is the sign and 
substance of this covenant. Before it had been 
stated in faithfulness, and the Word of God is 
exceeding strong: it is now sealed with blood, 
and believers have two things wherein to trust 
— the Word of God and the Sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ. As often, therefore, as the believer takes 
the Sacrament he pledges himself as in an oath 
to trust, to love, and to obey, and since there be 
two in a covenant, and the other be God, He in 
His turn pledges Himself to endure, to deliver, 
and to sanctify. Should, therefore, any believer 
be in the end put to confusion and fail to obtain 
the prize of holiness, he will leave the gate of 
the Heavenly City with the dishonored covenant 
of the Eternal in his hands and be able to boast 
that his faithfulness has been greater than the 
Word of his God. God would then, to use the 
bold figure in the Epistle to the Hebrews, be 
ashamed because men had trusted in Him even 
unto death, and risked their souls upon the trust, 
and He had played them false ; and therefore is 
it that however hard may be the road the saint 
shall travel, and however it may wind before it 
come to its close, it will one day bring him in 
[i8o] 



The PERSEVERANCE of the SAINTS 

by the gate into the City, and every one shall 
appear before God in Zion. And neither the 
God who invited this trust nor they who trusted 
will be put to shame.' 

Lest this sublime doctrine should be abused, it 
is guarded in Holy Scripture by certain whole- 
some terrors of the soul and certain solemn 
warnings of the Almighty. The Psalms breathe 
a spirit of absolute confidence of sober joy and 
of strong hope; yet a Psalmist who has known 
God and who clings to God, lifts up his heart in 
strong supplication that God would not cast him 
from His presence nor take away His Spirit. 
No one in the New Testament "has asserted the 
perseverance of the saints with greater strength 
of reason or more passionate heat of affection 
than St. Paul, yet it is this apostle who entreats 
his Christian flock to use all diligence and to 
make their calling and election sure; who is 
sometimes stricken with fear lest he himself, 
who had preached the gospel and made con- 
verts for Christ, should at last be a castaway. 
There are also in the Hebrew Epistles certain 
passages which will always be a battleground 
between Arminians and Calvinists, and which, at 
any rate, may make the most confident take heed 
to his steps and save the most foolish believer 
from presumption. It is salutary for every one 
who is walking in the narrow way, which leadeth 
upward to the stars, to remember the precipices 
which are on either side and the hopelessness of 
him who wantonly flings himself over their edge. 
Should any one who has been cleansed in the 
Blood of Christ trample Christ's sacrifice under 

[ i8i ] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

foot through persistent love of sin, or should any- 
one who had learned to call Him Lord deliber- 
ately deny His name, then it cannot be with him 
even as it was with David when he repented, and 
Peter, when he wept bitterly, for this man has 
hardened his heart, and has forsaken the Lord 
who redeemed him. Whether it be possible that 
any disciple of Christ should fall into such utter 
impenitence may be questioned, but the mere 
thought of such a possibility is enough to make 
us give heed unto our steps and to keep stead- 
fastly in the way of faith and righteousness. 
And if it be a good thing that our ways should 
at certain places be hedged up with thorns in the 
trials and affliction of this present world so that 
we be allured not away from the royal road of 
the Cross, it is also a good thing that on the 
right hand and left of our way, when it is in 
high places of success and of light, there should 
be precipices whose very sight fills our soul with 
fear and makes us cling the closer to our guide. 
Besides, if any believer should be so left to 
himself as to imagine that he can sin with 
impunity or even afford to be careless, he will 
be quickly undeceived. If God should not cast 
him off, but should remember His covenant, He 
will certainly see to it that this man be saved as 
by fire. In his sin he never can be saved; but 
while in his sin he will be visited with strong 
judgments of the Almighty, so that his own soul, 
and perhaps the public world, shall behold his 
punishment. No man will ever be punished 
more severely than the saint, or have a more 
overwhelming view of the Divine righteousness. 

[182] 



The PERSEVERANCE of the SAINTS 

Of all the sufferers in Old Testament history 
I take it that the chief was not Pharaoh nor 
Jezebel, but the patriarch Jacob; for every sin 
he committed he suffered double, and after the 
kind in which he had sinned, till he went down 
to his grave a sorrowful man, sanctified, but 
sanctified by the rod. David fell into the snare 
which besets rich and sensuous natures, so that 
he disgraced his own character and the name 
of God which he had mentioned, and the last 
years of David's life were years of trouble and 
of shame. He was not finally rejected, but he 
was severely chastised, and remains a monument 
as much of the righteousness as- of the faithful- 
ness of God. If it be difficult to understand 
the cowardice of Simon Peter's denial, it is more 
difficult to estimate the bitterness of his tears. 
Many and comfortable are the promises given 
unto the backslider in Holy Scripture, but 
searching and severe has been his discipline, so 
that when he returns unto the Lord it is with 
bent head and broken heart, never again to de- 
part from the ways of righteousness. 

Doubtless every one who has obeyed the in- 
vitation of God and set sail for the new world 
with an honest heart shall come at last into the 
fair haven of peace, whatever storm and head- 
winds he may meet on the way; but all will not 
come in after the same fashion. Some ships will 
make the harbor mouth with difficulty, with 
torn sails and bare decks^ and heavy losses — 
hardly saved ; others will enter the harbor with 
a flowing tide and a following wind, their sails 
full set and showing white in the light of the sun, 

[183] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

and they shall have an abundant entrance into 
the heavenly kingdom. Some believers may only 
escape to the shore on broken pieces of their 
ship, humiliated and half-dead, like David; 
others, like St. Paul, will come in as treasure 
ships, bearing with them the argosy of sacrifices 
and of services beyond all human reckoning, and 
at the ver}^ sight of their coming the inhabitants 
of the other land shall gather to bid them wel- 
come and to escort them into the presence of 
the King. 



[184] 



"The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 



XI 

The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

NO doctrine of the Catholic Faith has been 
more keenly debated than that which de- 
fines the Church; for while Christian 
people unite with their lips in saying, according 
to the final form of the fifth century, '' I believe 
in the Holy Catholic Church," they differ widely 
in their hearts about the spiritual content of the 
words. There are some, both of ancient and 
modern times, who have so exalted this belief 
that the Church has seemed to be the controller, 
and not merely one of the channels of the Divine 
Grace ; to be a mediator between the human soul 
and Christ, not merely His servant for the help of 
the soul; to be the tyrant of the human reason, 
not merely the teacher which brings to that reason 
its most perfect light. Such persons have not 
intended to do despite unto the Lord whom they 
reverence, or any injury to the souls of His 
people whom they love, but rather to make 
Christ visible and to bring Him nearer to a 
faithless world by His body the Church, and to 
supply to Christ's disciples, walking by faith and 
suffering daily from the bondage of things seen, 
that audible voice and that tangible assistance 
which would be theirs if the Lord were visibly 
present in the world. No doubt there have been 

[ 187 ] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

others who have exalted the Church in order 
that they might exalt themselves, and to whom 
the Body of Christ has simply been a worldly 
corporation — more opulent and exacting than 
the Roman Empire, because its authority was 
over the souls of men and its revenue only 
limited by their devotion to the Lord, — whose 
government they seized and whose material 
riches they exploited for their own benefit. " Let 
us enjoy the papacy," said Pope Leo X., that pure 
child of the Renaissance and baptized Pagan, 
** now that God has given it to us." Pope Leo, 
however, with the ambitious and sacrilegious 
ecclesiastics, whom he so perfectly represents, 
have been condemned by the consensus of the 
Christian Church, whose purity they outraged; 
and it were not just to cast this Simon Magus in 
the face either of Irenseus of the second century 
or Newman of the nineteenth century. Nothing 
has indeed been less worldly and selfish, nothing 
more pure and chivalrous, than the devotion of 
certain saintly persons to the Church, which is 
to their faith the Bride of their Lord and the 
Mother of their souls ; and if they have exceeded 
in this passion and have disturbed the balance of 
truth, it has been only through that limitation 
of the human intellect which finds it hard to 
preserve the proportion of faith, and through an 
admirable enthusiasm of love, which saw in His 
Church the continued Incarnation of their Lord. 
Certain other persons — who are found in 
modern rather than in ancient times — have so 
reduced and emptied the idea of the Church 
that they seem to imagine it to be a voluntary 

[ i88 J 



rhe HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

society, created for the highest ends, such, for 
instance, as a Bible or Missionary Society, rather 
than an institution, founded and inhabited by 
our Lord Jesus Christ; a friendly fellowship 
created by the social instincts of men rather 
than the earthly home of the soul, builded and 
appointed by God; a private witness to spiritual 
things rather than the commissioned ambassador 
of the Most High. This modest idea of the 
Church has commended itself to many pious 
people, not by its dignity, or spirituality, in 
which qualities it is very deficient, but for two 
accidental, though no doubt influential reasons; 
because it affords no opportunity for what such 
persons would consider priestly usurpation, and 
sacramental superstition, and because it fits in 
with the theory of democracy and realizes that 
spirit of brotherhood which Christ certainly 
taught, and for which we all long. No doubt 
there are on this side of thought some to whom 
the Church is still less spiritual and indeed is 
nothing more than a philanthropic or ethical 
agency — distributing charitable aid to poor 
people, and teaching the less intelHgent classes 
of the community that they must not steal or 
injure their neighbor; but here again it would 
not be fair to cast this arid and secular position 
in the face of a multitude of devout Christians, 
to whom the Church may after all be only a 
society, but to whom it is a society, wherein the 
disciples of the unseen Lord meet for the closest 
fellowship, and which exists to preach the gospel 
of His person and His Cross. 

When the atmosphere of the day is secular and 

[189] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

what is supernatural is apt to be supposed untrue, 
it is inevitable that the Divinity of the Church of 
God should be as much suspected as the Deity 
of her head; and since Christian folk are un- 
consciously influenced by this time-spirit, it might 
be a good corrective to consider what place has 
been given to the Church in the Gospels and 
in the Epistles as well as by the Fathers and 
Theologians, the Mystics and the Saints of all 
ages. It is true that our Lord only twice refers 
to the body of His disciples under the name of 
the Church, but on one of the two occasions He 
declares that the Church is to be founded upon 
a rock, and that He Himself will build it; that 
the Church will be a fortress so outstanding that 
it will provoke the utmost strength of the powers 
of evil, but will be so impregnable that the gates 
of Hell shall not prevail against it. Upon the 
other occasion he commanded that if any man 
had been wronged by his brother, and the 
offender would not listen to private remonstrance 
an appeal should be made to the Supreme 
Authority; and that if he would riot hear the 
Church, he was to be considered as a heathen 
man and a publican. The Lord also added that 
what the Church bound on earth should be 
bound in heaven, and whatsoever the Church 
loosed on earth should be loosed in heaven. If 
our Lord had made no other reference to His 
Church than in those two passages of St. 
Matthew's Gospel, then we were entitled to form 
the conclusion that the Church has been in some 
sense entrusted with the power and with the 
authority of God Himself. Readers of the Gos- 

[ 190] 



The HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

pels will, however, remember that those two brief, 
but most weighty references of the Lord are sup- 
plemented and amplified by His teaching on the 
Kingdom. While our Lord mentions Church 
twice, He mentions Kingdom one hundred and 
twelve times, and it goes without saying that the 
two words must be correlated before we can 
understand the mind of Jesus. This is a subject 
on which many learned persons have written and 
on which further light will always be welcome, 
but it is sufficient for my purpose to make a 
suggestion that the kingdom consists of men of 
a certain ethical character, together with the 
works which they do and the- influence which 
they exert in human society; that the kingdom, 
therefore, has no limits except the race, and 
needs no organization: that it is secret, being 
within and not without a man; that it is subtle 
as a fragrance, viewless, like tne wind, pervasive 
as the atmosphere, and yet visible in its effects of 
righteousness, joy, and peace. That the Church 
consists of the members of the kingdom united 
together in one body, which is organized and 
visible, whose members are bound together by 
a solemn covenant, and whose different duties 
are allotted to them by their Head; which has 
a mission to perform by visible means and an 
authority to exercise by appointed officers ; which 
receives men into its fellowship, and nurtures 
them, and chastises them, and can even cast 
them out. The kingdom is, as it were, the Jew- 
ish people, scattered abroad without political in- 
stitutions and without political status, but show- 
ing everywhere the same features of face, holding 

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The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

with all their soul their fathers' faith and keeping 
in their integrity the commandments of Moses. 
And the Church is as it were, the Jewish people, 
organized as a nation with the rights of citizen- 
ship, and a formal constitution, with the offices 
and the privileges and the obligations of a state. 
Anything, therefore, which Jesus said of the 
kingdom applies to the Church in her ethical 
and far-spread influence on human life. The 
Church is indeed the capital of the kingdom, 
where are gathered its riches and glory, its 
spiritual authority, and means of action. And, 
therefore, if any one thinketh lightly of the 
Church, he so far despises the kingdom of 
Heaven, which Christ everywhere magnifies, 
declaring it to be a pearl of great price, for 
which a man would be wise to sell all that he 
had, and the great feast which God had prepared 
for all who would come. 

When we leave the Gospels and cross the 
threshold of the Apostolic Scriptures, we find the 
Church filling the imagination and commanding 
the devotion of the holy writers. It is to the 
Church in the Acts of the Apostles that the Lord 
adds daily " such as are being saved " ; it is to the 
Church that Paul and Barnabas rehearse all that 
God had done for them; again and again St. 
Paul salutes and greets the Church; he declares 
that by the Church the wisdom of God is made 
known, and mourns as his chief sin that he once 
persecuted the Church; for love of the Church 
Christ gave Himself, and He will not be satisfied 
till He has presented it unto Himself a glorious 
Church; and when St. Paul giveth glory unto 
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The HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

God, Who is able to do exceeding: abundantly 
above all that we ask of Him, it is " in the Church 
by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world with- 
out end." 

From the days of the Apostles the Church of 
Christ has had a place second only to her Lord 
in the hearts of thoughtful and reverent men. 
Upon her august claims and gracious ministries, 
upon her spiritual glory and kindly shelter, the 
early Christian fathers expatiated with intense 
conviction and warm personal affection. With 
the sanction of Holy Scripture they called her by 
the most tender word in human speech — their 
Mother, and this title for the Church of Christ 
has never ceased from the speech of His disciples. 
'* He cannot have God for his Father," Cyprian 
used to say, '* who has not the Church for his 
mother." If it be thought that Cyprian may 
somewhat exceed in his churchly fashion, and if 
in the minds of some he be suspected through his 
exaltation of the holy ministry, then let such 
persons turn to Calvin's Institutes and read the 
fourth book on the *' Holy CathoHc Church." 
Referring to the visible Church under her title of 
Mother, this great theologian and acute thinker 
writes : " There is no other means of entering 
into life unless she conceiveth us in the womb 
and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her 
breast, and, in short, keep us under her charge 
and government until, divested of mortal flesh, 
we become like the angels." Again: "Beyond 
the pale of the Church no forgiveness of sins, no 
salvations, can be hoped for." *' The abandon- 
ment of the Church," Calvin declares, " is always 

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ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

fatal/' and he goes the length of saying " that all 
who reject the spiritual food of the soul divinely 
offered to them by the hands of the Church, 
deserve to perish of hunger and famine." Was 
it wonderful with this teaching before her mind 
that the Church of Scotland should have always 
held a just and worthy idea of the Church visible, 
and should have gladly accepted and always 
maintained the statement in the confession of 
faith, '' Unto this Catholic Visible Church Christ 
hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances 
of God for the gathering and perfecting of the 
saints in this life to the end of the world, and 
doth by His own presence and Spirit, according 
to His promise, make them effectual thereunto " ? 
No Church, and I do not except the Roman 
Church, has administered discipline with a more 
profound conviction of its spiritual utility and 
her own solemn responsibility for the souls which 
Christ purchased with His blood. " To these 
officers (that is, the officers of the Church) the 
keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are committed," 
so runs the article in the Confession, " by virtue 
whereof they have power respectively to retain 
and remit sins, to shut that kingdom against the 
impenitent, both by the word and censures; and 
to open it unto penitent sinners by the ministry 
of the Gospel, and by absolution from censure, 
as occasion shall require." Persons acquainted 
with Church life in Scotland will know that the 
Holy Table does not lie open there to unbe- 
lievers and evil livers, but is carefully ** fenced " 
and guarded. A communicant — especially in 
country districts where life is simpler, and the 

[194] 



rhe HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

traditions of the past stronger — will not approach 
the sacrament if living in any sin, but will confess 
the sin unto the minister, and invite the discipline 
of the Church; but it may not be known to 
many that the whole system of discipline is 
minutely and carefully regulated by law. That 
there are offences which cannot be dealt with by 
the minister and elders of the local Church, but 
have to be referred to the superior spiritual court, 
and that there is a graduated system of Church 
censure, ** admonition," " rebuke," " suspension " 
from the sacraments, *' suspension from office," 
where the person holds any office, " deposition " 
which is solemnly pronounced in the name of the 
Lord Jesus, and " excommunication." Such cen- 
sures, when inflicted on right grounds, are de- 
clared to be " sanctioned and ratified " by the 
Church's Living Head in Heaven. Absolution is 
pronounced by the moderator in the name of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and it is only granted when 
the person under discipline gives " hopeful evi- 
dence of penitence," and it is granted by the 
Church on the presumption that the offender has 
*' obtained pardon through His atoning blood." 
Brilliant historians of an unbeUeving and cynical 
temper, like Mr. Buckle, in his History of Civili- 
zation, may make themselves merry over the 
details of Church discipline, and wax indignant 
over the tyranny of the Scots clergy, but it re- 
mains a suggestive circumstance that an in- 
tractable and stiff-necked people, who have ever 
been jealous of their independence, and been 
willing to die rather than be slaves to any person, 
should have been so submissive to the Church. 

[195] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

Perhaps it would be difficult to find a more con- 
vincing evidence of the majesty of the Church of 
Christ and her inherent claim upon the conscience 
of believing people; while the high intelligence 
and practical ability of the Scots nation go to 
show that if the Church in that land has some- 
times been a severe, as she has always been a 
faithful, Mother, she has been abundantly justified 
of her children. 

It is surely also in this connection, a fact 
worthy of note that in proportion as the believer 
has been touched with the spirit of poetry, or, in 
other words, as his piety has been refined and 
sublimated, he has had a special vision of the 
beauty of the Church, and an intense devotion 
to her service. From beyond Jordan the lonely 
exile recalls the day when he went to the house 
of God with God's people, " with the voice of 
joy and praise, with the multitude that kept 
holyday," and his prayer is that God would send 
His Hght and His truth, and then would he go 
** unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding 
joy." Another saint cries out at the thought of 
the temple which was to him the home of God 
and the symbol of the Church, " How amiable 
are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts ! " and 
declares that he envies the happy birds which 
make their nests under the eaves of God's house. 
The faithful churchman of the former dispensa- 
tion is glad when the time comes round that he 
shall go " into the house of the Lord," and he 
prays that " peace may be within her walls and 
prosperity within her palaces." When the cap- 
tivity of the Church is turned, he is " like them 

[196] 



7he HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

that dream," and far away by the rivers of Baby- 
lon he weeps when he remembers Sion. There 
is nothing on earth to him so strong as the 
Church ** which cannot be removed, but abideth 
for ever," and this is the height of all blessing 
*' to see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy 
life." No doubt this and many another noble 
passage from the Psalmists and the Prophets are 
the voice of poetry ; but it is to be remembered 
that poetry and religion move in the same sphere, 
and those writers, being wonderfully inspired by 
the Holy Ghost, expressed the emotion which 
stirred the mind of many a silent believer, but 
which he never could have caught and cast into 
words. The first songs of the New Testament 
Church were awakened by the Messiah of God, 
at Whose coming the heavenly host and the 
saints on earth burst into praise, and the last 
song shall also be *' unto Him that loved us and 
washed us from our sins in His own Blood." 
For the risen Christ is the King of the Church, 
and to Him be glory and dominion for ever and 
ever. Before, however, the New Testament 
Scriptures had been completed, the sacred muse 
was again fired with the ancient theme which had 
moved the chief singers of Israel. St. John, sick 
at heart as he looked out upon that ancient 
world, turned from Rome, the mistress of foul 
vices and the persecutor of the saints, and being 
in the Spirit, as men must be who can see such 
things, he beheld the '* saints who have washed 
their robes and made them white in the Blood 
of the Lamb," and the armies of Heaven 
" clothed in fine linen, white and clean." He saw 

[ 197] 



ne DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the " holy city coming down from God out of 
heaven, and prepared as a bride adorned for her 
husband." And at the sight of the holy Jerusa- 
lem, with her twelve gates of pearl, and her 
streets of pure gold, and her walls of jasper, and 
the glory of the Lord as her sun, the servant of 
Jesus Christ cut ofif from all fellowship save that 
of his Lord, and seeing no light anywhere save 
through the gates of the city, beheld the glory 
of the Church, the Lamb's Wife, and was satis- 
lied. 

It has not been given unto the saints of later 
days to be touched with so heavenly a flame of 
inspiration, but they have not been indifferent to 
the excellent glory of the Church. Among the 
sons of the Church of England none appears to 
the writer to have more perfectly caught her 
spirit, — 

A fine aspect in fit array. 

Neither too mean, nor yet too gay, — 

than the author of the Temple, and surely the 
wisest, gentlest, holiest pastor who ever cared 
for the souls of countryfolk. Within George 
Herbert the special affection of Hebrew piety 
seemed to revive, and all which belonged to the 
Church was dear to him and the sign of heavenly 
mysteries. From the Church porch and stile, 
from the Church lock and key and the Church 
floor, to the pulpit and the Communion Table, 
the ordained ministers, and the Holy Scriptures 
— everything was sacred, and he served her with 
the mingled devotion of a courtier to his queen 
and a son to his mother. 

[ 198 ] 



The HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 



I joy. dear mother, when I view 
Thy perfect lineaments and hue, 

Both sweet and bright: 
Beauty in thee takes up her place, 
And dates her letters from thy face, 

When she doth write. 



Nor had our Scots saint and mystic, Samuel 
Rutherford, any less a love to Christ's Kirk, who 
through all his impassioned letters mourns less 
his own sufiferings than the shame put on Christ's 
Bride, and would willingly be in bonds if the 
Church of Scotland went free. 

That Christian has missed one of the most 
spiritual emotions of our faith who has not felt 
the fascination of the Church, which is above all 
controversies, behind all divisions, holier than 
all Christians, kindlier than any home ; for which 
a man might be willing to die, which he ought 
to love even as he loveth Christ. 

When we come to define the Church which 
has such a place in Christian thought and love, 
then we are at once face to face with a certain 
distinction which has led to much debate, and, 
it may be added, much confusion of thought. 
The Confession of Eaith speaks of '' the Visible 
Church, which is also CathoHc or Universal " 
under the Gospel ; and the Nineteenth Article of 
Religion says, " The Visible Church of Christ 
is a congregation of faithful men, in which the 
pure Word of God is preached and the Sacra- 
ments are duly administered." This form of 
words implies that there is a sense in which the 
Church is not visible, and the distinction comes 
practically to be between the Church of Christ, 

[199] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

which consists of all the members of its body, 
who, from the beginning to the end, shall be 
saved through His sacrifice, and made perfect 
before God in Him, and that number of the same 
multitude who at any time are in this world and 
are bound together in Christian fellowship, of 
which the sign shall be those mentioned in the 
above article (although there may be other notes) 
that the " pure word is preached and the Sacra- 
ments are duly administered." Against this dis- 
tinction many pious and learned theologians of 
the present day have strongly protested, con- 
tending that it has no warrant in Apostolic 
thought or early usage, and they are also haunt- 
ed with the fear that the practical use of this 
distinction will be to belittle the Church Visi- 
ble — the assembly of faithful, people — and to pal- 
liate the sin of schism as well as to lower the 
obligation of holiness and the claims of brother- 
hood. Whether the distinction be necessary in 
thought and be implied in the teaching of our 
Lord and St. Paul is a matter to whjch I am 
coming, but I wish to repudiate the suggestion 
that belief in the Church of all the ages, which 
is the Bride of the Lamb, should sap any one's 
loyalty to that portion of the Church which has 
not yet crossed the river but is still militant on 
earth, or that the profound sense that the Church 
of Christ is greater than the Church of Rome, or 
the Church of England, or the Church of Scot- 
land, either separately or all together, must on 
that account render a Christian indififerent to any 
Church which is one of the Visible representa- 
tives of the Spiritual body of Christ or lessen his 

[ 200 ] 



ne HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

grief that, say, there should be in one city both 
a Roman and an AngHcan Bishop exercising 
jurisdiction, and claiming the loyalty of Christ's 
people, to the confusion of faith, and the disunity 
of the Visible Church. With this spectacle be- 
fore his eyes — and it is one of the most painful 
in the spiritual world — one must hold either that 
the Roman Bishop and his people, among whom 
he knows many saints, or the Anglican Bishop 
and his people, of whom he holds as high a judg- 
ment, are in a state of wilful separation from 
the Church of Christ, and therefore, to use Cal- 
vin's words, are *' beyond the pale of salvation," 
or he must fall back upon some larger concep- 
tion of the Church, which will unchurch neither 
of those congregations of Christian people. At 
the same time he may firmly believe that it is 
only through human ignorance and human sin 
that this division has come to pass, and that 
there ought to be in every city or land only one 
great congregation which shall be the Visible 
representative of the Body of Christ. Very 
likely Calvin may be censured because he speaks, 
like the Nineteenth Article, of the Visible Church 
instead of saying only the Church, but certainly 
his intention was not to justify unwarrantable 
separation from the historic Church of his day, 
since no one, not even the theologians of the 
Roman Church, has denounced more strongly 
the self-sufificiency and pride of those who call 
themselves by the name of Christ, and yet refuse 
to live in Christ's Household. 

When one inquires whether this way of look- 
ing at the Church from two sides, as it were, to 

[201 ] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

which the words, less than feUcitous, " visible " 
and '' invisible " have been given can be justified, 
then he must turn, first of all to the Gospels to 
discover whether it was in the mind of Christ, 
Who is the supreme Reason. There surely can 
be no doubt, and that will be taken up later, that 
Jesus did not leave His Disciples to form some 
kind of society of their own accord, but that He 
established it with all the necessary conditions 
of such a body, and that His desire was that His 
Church should be Visible and Undivided, but 
there seems to me as little doubt that He had 
a larger vision which was not confined to the 
Visible Society in the world. He is declared 
by the fourth Evangelist to be the '' True Light 
which lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world," and wherever this light has been wel- 
comed and obeyed, there, doubtless, have been 
Christ's Disciples ; " and Thou, O Lord," we 
may say with confidence, " wast their Redeemer, 
though the preached Word was ignorant of 
them, and the Church Visible acknowledged 
them not." He were a bold man, and something 
worse than bold, who should deny the Saints 
outside the pale of Judaism and of Christianity, 
and he surely holds less than the truth of the In- 
carnation, and does less than honor to the Lord, 
the only Saviour of mankind, who does not 
ascribe all virtue in such men unto Him Whom, 
not having known, they followed. Some place 
must be found for those lonely, beautiful souls 
who by their faith and charity have put Chris- 
tian folk to shame, and, as there is no just use of 
words by which they could be called members 

[ 202 ] 



The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

of the Church Visible, we gladly acknowledge 
all who ** lived or live with right reason, as mem- 
bers of the Church Invisible." No blame, of 
course, can be attached to them because they 
did not belong to a Church of which they had 
never heard; but our Master goes farther, and 
extends charity to those who, being in contact 
with the company of His Disciples, yet for some 
reason remain separate. When St. John, seeing 
some one casting out devils in Jesus' name, for- 
bad him — and that in the true ecclesiastical spirit 
of all ages, '' because he followeth not us " — Jesus 
said, " Forbid him not. . . . for he that is not 
against us is on our part." And in the same 
spirit was that great saying of His which re- 
mains for ever the standard of judgment as to 
who are Christians and who are not. " By their 
fruits ye shall know them." When Jesus taught 
the Samaritan woman the way everlasting. He 
told her that the exclusive dispensation of relig- 
ion, binding it up with one nation and one form, 
was passing away, and that in days to come 
every one would be counted acceptable with the 
Father who worshipped the Father in spirit and 
in truth. And when Jesus laid down this weighty 
principle, we are not to understand that there 
would be no longer a Church, with its officers 
and its rites, or that it would not be the duty 
and privilege of Christ's people to belong to it; 
but surely we are to understand that all men who 
worship God with a sincere and pure heart are 
within the Church. One also finds himself, I 
humbly submit, in the larger atmosphere when 
a woman from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, an 

[ 203 ] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

alien from the covenant and promises of Israel, 
was, for the trying of her faith, refused by the 
Lord in language which He borrowed from the 
bigotry of the Jewish Church. He distinguished 
between the Jews who were children and her 
who was a dog. She vanquished Him in the end 
Who was willing to be vanquished, and the Lord 
not only granted her request, but declared His 
amazement at her faith. If Faith be the bond 
that binds the soul to Christ, conscious or un- 
conscious, then there was not greater faith in 
Israel than that of this Canaanite woman. Is 
it not also significant that this distinction of 
Invisible and Visible receives a sanction from 
our Lord's two related ideas of the Kingdom 
and the Church? For is not the Kingdom that 
universal sphere of goodness in heaven and in 
earth, from which no good man and no good 
thing can be" excluded, but whose influence is 
secret and subtle, and the Church that corporate 
institution which can receive and cast out, which 
can be attacked and triumph over attack? If 
any one have the Kingdom of God within him, 
and there is the home of the Kingdom, then 
surely he must belong to the larger Church, for 
Christ is his King, and Christ's Spirit dwells in 
his heart. 

When we pass into the period when the 
Church was an organized and recognized insti- 
tution, and when we read the Epistles of St. 
Paul, it is a little perplexing to understand his 
attitude, and his references to the Church appear 
sometimes to have an air of unreality. Nothing 
can be more stately or more beautiful than the 

[204] 



The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

address to the Church with which he opens his 
letters. It is to the " Saints " he writes, to the 
" Faithful in Christ Jesus," to them who are 
" chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation 
of the world," to persons " called to be holy and 
without blame before Him in love." According 
to St. Paul, the Church is a body of people, 
whether in Ephesus or in Rome, separate from 
this world, united in Christ Jesus, showing forth 
His life, and holy even as He is holy. When 
we turn to any particular body of Christians 
whom St. Paul addresses after this lofty fashion, 
we suffer a great disillusionment, for one can 
hardly imagine a greater contrast between tjie 
salutation of St. Paul and the people whom he is 
addressing, between his description and their 
likeness. The members of the early Christian 
communities were bigoted, jealous, ungrateful, 
quarrelsome, and their lives were disfigured by 
gross sins of the heathen life which they had not 
yet completely thrown off. Nor was it only the 
purer Churches whom St. Paul addressed as 
holy ; he made no distinction of character in his 
opening salutation whatever he may have some- 
times made of personal feeling. If he called 
those excellent Philippians, who had been so 
kind to him and so generous in all their ways, 
'' Saints in Christ Jesus," he spoke of the Corin- 
thians as " sanctified in Christ Jesus and called 
to be Saints," yet he had to complain of the 
Corinthians that one of their number was guilty 
of a horrible sin, that some had been intoxicated 
at the Lord's Supper, that others had despised 
His Gospel, that others had spoken of himself 

[205] 



7he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

with contemptuous ingratitude. Surely it is 
courtesy, or formality, carried to a dangerous 
extent, to apply the word Saint to such people, 
and to refer to them as sanctified ; yet there never 
was a man more sincere than St. Paul, never any 
one who dealt more closely with the facts of 
spiritual life. What is the explanation of this 
paradox, that St. Paul should begin his letter to 
the Corinthians with the word Saints, and a little 
later should be using the word fornication? 

The explanation must be sought in the mag- 
nificent spiritual imagination of St. Paul, which 
was not confined by the things which are seen 
and temporal, but lived among the things which 
are unseen and eternal. Two worlds were his, 
this imperfect and corrupt world, which is pass- 
ing away, and the perfect and holy world which 
remaineth. The real, which was often lament- 
able enough, disappeared in the vision of St. 
Paul before the ideal, and he saw not the thing 
which was, but the thing which was to be. 
When he looked upon a Christian Disciple, he 
saw not a Roman slave, ignorant, unclean, half 
brutalized, beset by the inevitable sins of his lot, 
an abject of humanity, but he saw a man who 
had been crucified with Christ upon the Cross, 
who had died with Christ unto this present 
world, who had risen with Christ from the dead, 
breaking all bonds, and now was seated with 
Christ in the heavenly places. This diseased, and 
broken, and unsightly man Christ had loved from 
all eternity ; for him Christ had laid down His 
life, and this man Christ had purchased with His 
own precious blood. This was not a bondsman, 

[ 206 ] 



The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

he was a son of God ; he was not a miserable, he 
had all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places ; 
he was not an evil-doer, he was a Saint. He 
beheld the man in Christ Jesus, and it was in 
Christ Jesus St. Paul beheld all things. The life 
which Christ was living in the heavenly places 
was the life His Disciples were living in idea, 
and would one time live in reality ; and, there- 
fore, when St. Paul addressed the Church, he 
thought of it as spiritual, the Body of the Lord 
crucified, dead, risen, holy, the congregation of 
all the saints. This is the Church Invisible, 
because in its ideal beauty it can only be seen 
by faith — by those who can see' it in the Lord. 
Turning, then, as it were from heaven to earth, 
and from Christ to Christians, he found in 
Corinth a company of self-conceited, conten- 
tious, ungrateful, and evil-living people, whom 
he must rebuke and teach and guard and endure, 
if haply, through his work and the grace of God, 
the real may be purified and elevated till it passes 
at last into the ideal, and even the Corinthian 
Church be presented as a pure Virgin unto 
Christ. This is the Church Visible ; and the 
contradiction which every one must have felt 
between the address at the beginning of St. 
Paul's letter and the contents of the letter is due 
not to the Apostle's unreality, but to his spirit- 
uality, and nothing is more likely to lift the Visi- 
ble communities of Christian folk above this 
world and above their own sin than the constant 
vision of that glorious Body of Christ, which 
with her Lord is trampling this world and sin 
and death under her feet. The Church Invisible 

[207] 



Jhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

is at once the condemnation and the inspiration 
of the Church Visible. 

When St. Paul carries about with him this dis- 
tinction between an unseen perfection and a seen 
imperfection which are closely related together, 
he is not thinking otherwise than we do our- 
selves. There is perfect beauty which is only 
suggested to us by the finest picture we have 
ever seen, there is perfect truth which is poorly 
shadowed by the deepest creeds we say, there is 
perfect life which is scantily embodied in the 
strongest man, there is perfect holiness which 
puts to shame the best man we have known. 
Within our minds we carry these ideals, and we 
see the real reaching after them and witnessing 
to them ; and so behind the visible lies the invisi- 
ble. If there be no other Church of Christ than 
that which we behold, torn by schism, coarsened 
by the world's spirit, corrupted by gross sin, 
then it is vain to talk of the Lord's Body, and 
the Bride of the Lamb. As one looks, however, 
more closely into the life of Christ's Disciples on 
earth, he sees the faint traces of a character 
which is not of this world, a hard-fought battle 
with sin which carries with it the pledge of vic- 
tory, and an aspiration after the Highest which 
is the prophecy of its own fulfilment. This 
character means some type after which it is 
being formed ; this fight means some living force 
which is working to an end ; this aspiration 
means some hope which will not make ashamed. 
The Hght begins to shine through the coarse 
screen, and as we look we forget the Church 
Visible, and are comforted and inspired by the 

[ 208 ] 



The HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

mystical figure of the Church, invisible to sight, 
but visible and altogether lovely unto every one 
who being in the Spirit hath seen an open heaven 
and Jesus at the right hand of God. 

If any one beheves that the Church is the mys- 
tical Body of the Lord, it follows that he must 
believe also in her unity, for the Body of Christ 
cannot be divided, but must be one through all 
the ages, and behind all circumstances. Be- 
tween the innumerable Saints from the first, who 
saw Christ afar off and reached forward to re- 
ceive Him, to the last, who shall hear the call of 
the Evangel, there will be incalculable differ- 
ences of character, of experience, of knowledge, 
and of service, but in heart the Saints will be 
one — one in faith, because they believe in the 
same Lord; one in hope, because they wait for 
the same event ; one in charity, because the love 
of God is shed abroad in their hearts. When 
Isaiah and St. John and St. Francis and John 
Bunyan meet, that wherein they differ in time 
and associations and theology fades away, and 
they greet one another as brethren in Christ 
Jesus. Being one with Christ and rivals in their 
love to the Lord, they are united one to other 
in a bond which the influences of this present 
time could not break, which the life of eternity 
will only confirm. When the devout disciple 
receives the Sacrament of the Body and Blood 
of our Lord, and celebrates His dying love, he 
is united not only to the little company of fellow- 
communicants in a house made with hands, but 
also to all Christ's Disciples throughout the 
world, with those also whom He loves and has 

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Ihe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

lost awhile, and with all the Saints who have 
washed their robes and made them white in the 
Blood of the Lamb. Though he be the least of 
all the Saints, and the chief of sinners, yet hath 
he a place in the heart of the Lord, and his name 
is written in the Lamb's Book of life. Therefore 
the chief of Saints must bid him welcome, and 
will not dare to cast him out. This is the 
one perfect fellowship within human knowledge, 
wherein all have one mind and one heart and one 
life, and within this fellowship is made known 
the mystery of the Divine will, " That in the dis- 
pensation of the fulness of times He might 
gather together in one all things in Christ, 
both which are in heaven, and which are on 
earth." 

No imagery is too strong or too intimate to 
illustrate and enforce this unity, which was one 
of the deepest desires of the Lord, which He died 
to make possible, which He lives to make real. 
The centre of the unity is ever Christ Himself 
risen from the dead and alive for evermore ; and 
the condition of the unity is fellowship with Him 
by the Holy Ghost. He is the vine whom His 
Father planteth, and every disciple is a branch 
thereof, drawing his sap from the central stock 
and partner with every other branch, because 
he is partner with Chirst. No branch can cast 
out another branch ; no branch can add another. 
One power only can engraft ; one power only can 
cut off. For the unity stands not in the relation 
of the branches one to another, but in the rela- 
tion of them all to Christ. The Lord is the foun- 
dation stone which the builders did despise, but 

[210] 



The HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

Who has become for ever the Head of the cor- 
ner. And upon this foundation, not upon creeds, 
nor rites, but on the Hving person of Christ, rests 
every Christian soul, as a living stone upon the 
one foundation. Resting upon this one stone 
the others are compactly built together, and form 
a Temple for the habitation of God ; apart from 
this foundation they are but a heap of stones, 
scattered, disconnected, unprofitable. If any 
one be separate from Christ, then is he no part 
of the Divine Temple ; if any one be resting on 
the Lord as his God and Saviour, then is he so 
built into the structure of God's Eternal House, 
that no hand of man can remove the stone. 
Christ is the Head, and His disciples are mem- 
bers of the Body, some of greater honor and 
some of less, but yet each one a part of the living 
organism. By faith the disciple has been born 
again into this new life, and by faith he con- 
tinues therein ; and though he be the humblest 
of all the members of Christ's Body, the minutest 
and most distant part, yet to it the blood flows 
from the heart, and it also is directed by the 
Head ; and if it is hurt, every member of the 
Body suffers also, and the Head is the first to 
feel and sorrow. Christ is the Bridegroom, and 
the Church is the Bride, whom He has not only 
wooed, but also redeemed ; and so every member 
of the Church is married unto Christ in a cove- 
nant which cannot be broken. From Christ the 
believer receives the right to his name, under 
the protection of Christ he lives, betv/een him 
and Christ no one has any power to come, and 
the intimacy of the marriage state is but the 

[211] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

shadow of the union between Christ and the 
souls which make His Church. 

So profound and mysterious is this union first 
between Christ and the soul, and then in Christ 
between all Christian souls, that the Lord uses 
illustrations which transcend human knowledge. 
The unity of the Church is to be so spiritual, so 
unlimited, so hfted above time and space and 
every visible condition, so tender also, so gra- 
cious, and so holy, that it is to be like unto the 
relation of the persons in the Holy Trinity. As 
the High Priest and Head of His Church, Christ 
lifted up His hands to God before He offered His 
sacrifice, and now lifts them up for ever in the 
heavenly places, with the signs of sacrifice upon 
them, that the multitude of His Disciples may be 
one in God the Father and in Him, according 
to the measure wherein the Father and the Son 
are one. As the Father and the Son have ever 
one thought, so that the Son is the Word of God, 
and have done one work, so that whatsoever the 
Son saw the Father do, that He also did; and 
one love, so that the Son lay in the bosom of the 
Father ; and one life, so that the Son liveth by the 
Father ; the Church is to be won in truth, in 
work, in love, and in Hfe. " I in them, and Thou 
in me, that they may be made perfect in one." 

The unity of the Church, according to the idea 
of the Lord, is first of all spiritual, and would 
exist although there were no visible organized 
body upon earth, as the unity of the Trinity ex- 
isted before the incarnation of the Son, yet' no 
one can read the mediatorial prayer of Christ 
without being persuaded that the unity of the 

[212] 



The HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 

Church should be reaHzed and presented to the 
world. When the world saw a multitude of 
people of every nation, of every degree, of every 
disposition, of every circumstance, bound to- 
gether in one, for the most heavenly ends and on 
the most gracious conditions, then the world 
would have an unanswerable evidence that a new 
power was working in the midst of human life, 
and that God Himself was with us. The Incar- 
nation of the Lord would be as it were continued 
and vindicated by this vast harmonious spiritual 
body which He inhabited, and the world would 
know '' that Thou hast sent me and hast loved 
them as Thou hast loved me." It were strange, 
therefore, and one is amazed that devout and 
earnest men can be satisfied with such an idea 
of the Church Visible, that Christ should give no 
directions for the organization and government 
of this great society on earth, but should leave 
His Disciples to form societies of any kind they 
pleased, as many as might be convenient, and at 
any time which seemed expedient. The ques- 
tion is not whether the Jewish synagogue had 
not a certain system of government which was 
partly taken over into the Christian Church ; nor 
whether the union of Christians in some sort of 
society was not a fulfilment of a natural desire 
for fellowship ; nor whether the creation of a re- 
ligious society did not receive a certain sanction 
and support from the existence of many philan- 
thropic guilds throughout the Roman Empire in 
the first century ; nor is it whether the Christian 
Church did not develop the original organiza- 
tion given by the Lord and His Apostles. The 

[213] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

question is this, whether Christ Himself laid 
down with His Divine authority the foundation 
of that universal society which was to be on 
earth the embodiment of the Church Invisible 
and Eternal. Is not the evidence conclusive? 
Did He not preach during all His ministry the 
doctrine of the Kingdom, and is not kingdom 
the strongest word for society? Did He not 
declare that He was Himself its Head, Whose 
teaching alone was authoritative, Whose pres- 
ence was omnipotent, Whose judgment was to 
be final. Was there not a condition of admis- 
sion into this society — faith in Himself? Was 
there not a condition of fellowship — love to God 
and man? Were there not to be rewards to 
them who were faithful, punishments for them 
who were unfaithful? Did He not call twelve 
officers and place in their hands the government 
of the Church and its treasure of truth ? Did He 
not institute two sacraments, the one to be the 
sign of union to Himself and through Him to 
the Church, the other to be the sign of com- 
munion with Him and through Him with the 
Church? With a chief officer, with rules and 
rites surely we have a society which may develop 
its organization to meet new circumstances, and 
apply its power in new directions, but which 
from the beginning has a constitution and an au- 
thority ; and we are justified in saying that Christ 
gave her constitution to the Church during the 
days of His ministry, and that constitution was 
carried into effect in the period of His Apostles. 

It is difficult also to resist the conviction that 
Christ intended that His Visible Church should 

[214] 



The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

be one society the world over instead of being 
divided into sections warring with one another 
and making sport for an unbeheving world. 
Surely every one will agree that it were more 
becoming, and therefore more in keeping with 
the mind of Christ, that in every country there 
should be one Church — the Church of Scotland 
or of England, by which is intended the Church 
of Christ in Scotland or England — and not half- 
a-dozen Churches ; that in every parish there 
should be one place of worship where all should 
meet in the name of the Lord, not half-a-dozen 
fighting for the possession of the people. Noth- 
ing can more certainly hinder the faith of the 
world, and nothing has so weakened the energies 
of Christian people and so afflicted their hearts,, 
as the schisms and feuds by which Christ's visible 
Church has been rent asunder. 

When the Church Visible, which is the shadow 
of the Church Invisible, is rent — for the spiritual 
Body must ever be undivided — then the cause 
is always one and the same, and it ought to lie 
much more heavily both upon the heart and con- 
science of believing Christians. The division of 
the Church into sects, whether Roman, Anglican, 
Scots, or Non-conformists, since any division 
does mean section, is not an accident, nor a mis- 
fortune, and certainly not an ingenious design 
to stir up the Church into greater activity, but 
is a distinct and flagrant sin. If Christian peo- 
ple, gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus, and 
calling one another brethren, had obeyed Christ's 
commandments and yielded to the guidance of 
the Lord's Spirit, they had lived in purity and in 

[215] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

charity, as did the Christians of Pentecost, and 
the Church on earth had been one to-day, as the 
Church in Heaven is one, and she had been " fair 
as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an 
army with banners." Wherever there is holi- 
ness there is unity, wherever there is unhoHness 
there is strife, and it was because the vision of 
the Lord grew dim and discipline was relaxed, 
and the world cast her tangling veil round the 
Christian heart, and brotherly love died into 
ashes, that the fair Church of Christ was scat- 
tered into contending fragments and became a 
scandal in the face of men. No doubt the divis- 
ions of the Church have been made the means of 
caUing her to repentance and restoring purity, 
of moving her to good works and vast sacrifices, 
were it only through the criticism and rivalry of 
separate Christian bodies ; but this does not 
mean that such divisions were the methods of 
the Lord, or that He had any pleasure when one 
crieth, '' I am -of Paul," and another, '' I am of 
Cephas." What it means is that the Lord, 
Whose grace is as marvellous as it is mighty, has 
caused light to arise out of darkness, and has 
made the wrath of men to praise Him, so that in 
the good which has come from this vast evil we 
have another illustration of the Apostle's tri- 
umphant word, " Where sin abounded, grace did 
much more abound." 

While schism is a sin both against Christ, the 
Head of the Church, and the Church, which is 
His Body, it is not to be taken for granted that 
the sinners are those who have separated from 
the original and historic visible society. It may 

[216] 



The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

be, and it often has been, that people have left 
that branch of the Christian Church into which 
they were born and baptized on grounds which 
cannot be justified — because their pride had been 
ofifended, or their self-will checked, or because 
their brethren were poor and they desired the 
company of rich men. Secession from the 
Church of one's fathers on such grounds proves 
a frivolous and worldly temper of mind, and has 
deserved the censure both of Christ's people and 
of the Lord. No one ought to leave his fold 
unless he be driven out, and unless he have good 
reason to believe that the Shepherd has been 
driven out with him, and in that case the fold 
to which he goes is the fold of Christ, and he 
carries the Church with him. If at any time 
the Church, for instance, becomes so impure 
that the Ten Commandments of Moses, to say 
nothing of the greater eleventh commandment 
of the Lord, are broken without rebuke, and the 
name of Christ's ordained ministers becomes a 
synonym in the satire of the day for a rascal and 
an evil liver, and if redress be asked from the 
governors of the Church and be refused, then, 
in honor to Christ and to conscience, nothing 
remains for Christian people but to depart from 
this polluted place and to build another purer 
home for the Lord. When such faithful men 
depart with sore hearts, they leave not the 
Church ; they leave what is for the time the syn- 
agogue of Satan ; they leave not their Lord, but 
the spirit of evil which has taken His place. 
The Lord goes with them in their exodus be- 
cause they are keeping His words and following 

[217] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

in His steps, and they are not the schismatics 
who are cleaving to their Saviour in obedience 
and hoHness, but they are the schismatics who 
have denied the Lord and put Him to shame in 
His own house, who have driven out both the 
Master and His disciples. If the chiefs of an 
army become disloyal to their king, and enter 
into an open alliance with the enemy, then they 
are not the mutineers, even though they be only 
private soldiers, who break the bonds of disci- 
pline and desert in order to reform the army in 
the name of their king and for the support of 
his cause. They carry the colors with them 
which are of no use to the other side ; they are 
the true army, and they have kept their sacra- 
mental oath. When the king holds his court 
and judges between the loyal and the disloyal, 
he will not punish the soldiers who disobeyed 
the order of treason, but he will sharply judge 
the generals who betrayed their trust. And for 
such generals to accuse such soldiers and in such 
circumstances of mutiny — for the Borgias to 
accuse the saints of disloyalty — is the most mon- 
strous irony in history. 

Suppose, again, the State should lay so strong 
and profane a hand upon the Church that the 
civil power, through, it may be, an unbelieving 
and evil-living man, appoints the highest officers 
of Christ's house, and the Church must receive 
them whether they be spiritual or unspiritual 
men, and must even admit them to their offices 
with the sacred rites of Christ's appointment, till 
it be such an one as Charles II. or George IV. 
who reigns over Christ's Church. What, then, 

[218] 



The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

is the duty of His true disciples when they have 
done their utmost to cast out this usurper and 
to restore to the Church her freedom in Christ 
Jesus, and have failed because the world within 
the Church has become stronger than her Lord ? 
Must they not leave this Egypt and all its 
treasure of riches and of rank and go out into 
the wilderness to serve Him in peace Who lived 
not in palaces, Who knew not where to lay His 
head? Will the Lord remain with Herod Antipas 
or go with His disciples ? Is this institution the 
Church of the Galilean or the creation of kings ? 
Have they not been true lovers of the Bride of 
Christ, who could not bear to see her amid the 
luxury and seduction of Solomon's palace, but 
have brought her out, where in simplicity and 
in poverty she may keep the covenant of her 
heart with her beloved ? They are not the 
schismatics whose love to Christ many waters 
could not quench, nor could the floods drown. 
They are the worst of schismatics, who, for the 
sake of a fair vineyard, whose keepers bring 
each one " a thousand pieces of silver," would 
sell the chastity of Christ's pure Bride. 

When the Church Visible has been divided by 
her own sin, a new situation is created, and it 
is vain for any part of the divided Church, to 
claim to be the original Church with an exclusive 
succession and authority. The Church of Rome 
made the position intolerable for the Church of 
England in the sixteenth century and the Church 
of England compelled many of her g:odly min- 
isters to leave her communion, though not the 
Communion of the Lord, for conscience sake, in 
[219] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the seventeenth century, and the Church of Scot- 
land, by slavish submission to the State, lost a 
goodly portion of her clergy and people in 1843. 
Amid this lamentable confusion no Church has 
any right to exalt its head above its neig^hbors, 
but each Church must prove its right to be a true 
representative of Christ's one Church. Various 
tests may be justly proposed, but each one ought 
to be charitably appHed. One is, that a Church 
hold the faith of the Saints and preach the pure 
Gospel of Christ, and that the two Sacraments 
of Christ's appointment be reverently adminis- 
tered. Another is, that her members keep the 
commandments of the Lord, and live together 
in brotherly love, showing forth the Lord's life, 
and commending Him unto the world by their 
talk and conversation. The chief and final test 
must always be that laid down by the Lord 
Himself, and which cannot be evaded — *' by their 
fruits ye shall know them." Wherever people 
live the Christ life, there surely are so many 
Christians, or else the evidence of relig:ion has 
no meaning, and the relation between the soul 
and Jesus Christ is only a name. If twenty 
people separate themselves from the historic 
Church in some age of intolerable corruption, 
and meet to worship the Lord in an upper room, 
each one a true beHever in His name, and a 
humble follower in His steps, are they to be 
considered outside the Church of God and the 
pale of salvation ? If this be so, then Christ and 
the Church are in sharp collision, and one or the 
other must be wrong. The Church cuts of¥ their 
names from her roll, but they are written in the 
[ 220 ] 



The ^OZr CATHOLIC CHURCH 

Lamb's Book of Life. The Church casts them 
forth from her fellowship, but Christ has them in 
His heart. The Church holds out no hope for 
them, but Christ has gone to Heaven to prepare 
a place for them. When Christ said, '' Him that 
cometh unto Me," those twenty people came, and 
now the word of Christ holdeth true, " I will in 
no wise cast (him) out." Excommunicated by 
the Church, they are received by the Lord; con- 
demned by the Church, they are justified by 
the Lord; persecuted by the Church, they are 
comforted by the Lord. Who shall separate 
between them and Christ ? Who can deprive 
them of His love and of His friendship ? When 
they are cast out, Christ also is cast out; where 
they go He goes; where they live He lives; 
where they suffer He suffers; and in the world 
to come where He is there they also shall be, 
or else the invitations of the Gospel and the 
promises of the Lord shall be broken, and the 
sacrifice and intercession of the Lord be of no 
avail. We do not come to our Lord through 
the Church, and no authority of the Church can 
make us a member of His Body; we come into 
the Church by coming to Christ, and he is in 
the Church now and for ever, who is in Christ 
Jesus, a member of the Church Spiritual and 
Eternal, although the whole of the Church 
Visible should declare* Him to be accursed. 
When the Bishop of Vasona was pronouncing 
the degradation of Savonarola, he was so shaken, 
as he might well be by his spiritual insolence, 
that he made a mistake in the formula of excom- 
munication. '' I separate thee from the Church 

[221 ] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

Militant and Triumphant," he said, whereupon 
Savonarola cried in a tone that pierced to the 
soul of all who heard, " From the Church Militant, 
not from the Church Triumphant, for that is not 
within thy power." It is possible to cast out 
from the Visible society, and many a Saint of 
God has been cast out from the Lord Himself, 
Who was excommunicated by the Jewish Church, 
to the Prophet of Florence, who was degraded by 
the Romans; but no man can cast his brother 
from the Church, which is in God the Father and 
in our Lord Jesus Christ. " Hoc enim tuum non 
est " is a mighty truth, beating down the pride of 
men and setting a limit to their power. It is the 
protection of Christian liberty and the vindica- 
tion of the supreme authority of Christ, Who is 
Lord in His own house. He that believeth and 
he that loveth is the friend of Jesus; and where 
two or three disciples are gathered together in 
the Lord's name, there is the Church, for there is 
Christ. Heresies there are and schisms, " never- 
theless the foundation of God standeth sure, 
having this seal, * The Lord knoweth them that 
are His.' And, ' Let every one that nameth the 
name of Christ depart from iniquity.' " 

While the unity of the Church is in its essence 
spiritual, depending upon the relation of the soul 
to Christ, and the denial of this spirituality is 
profanity, yet every true disciple of Christ must 
pray also for that unity which is present and 
visible. He is not to be approved who belittles 
it, he will not be lightly judged who has wantonly 
broken it, he will be severely punished who has 
caused his brethren to break it against their will. 

[ 222 J 



The HOLT CATHOLIC CHURCH 

Blessed is he who longs for the day when, from 
the rising to the setting of the sun, and from 
pole to pole, there shall be one Church Catholic 
and Apostolic, Holy and Undivided. Blessed is 
he who labors by speech or deed to remove 
offences from between brethren, to bring together 
those who have been long separated, to widen the 
bonds of fellowship in Christ; blessed the man 
who shall see the day when the walls of Jerusalem 
have been rebuilt, and the Church of God be as 
a city that is compact together, " whither the 
tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the 
testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name 
of the Lord." Until that day come, let us pray 
for the peace of Christendom, and let every one 
prosper who loveth the Church of Christ. 



[223] 



"The HOLT MINISTRY 



XII 

The HOLT MINISTRY 

IT may be boldly said that there is no office 
in human society so sacred as that of the 
Christian Ministry, no man on whom lies so 
heavy a burden as the minister of Christ. If he 
is to be worthy of his name, and fulfil the condi- 
tions of apostolic days, he must have been called 
twice by the Spirit of God — once to personal 
faith, once to public service — and without both 
calls he ought not to enter on this high duty. 
He also receives a double portion of grace, so 
much that he may overcome his own sin, and 
keep the law in his own life, so much that he 
may help his fellow-men in their spiritual con- 
flict and win the world to his Master. It is neces- 
sary for him not only to feed upon the Word 
of God for his own spiritual life, but also so to 
understand it that he may be able to feed the 
souls of other men. Unto him is given the com- 
mission of Christ's Evangel, that he may declare 
the mercy of God; and the vindication of Christ's 
law, that he may beat down unrighteousness; and 
the charge of Christ's people, that he may keep 
them in the way everlasting. Upon him in 
especial depends the spiritual prosperity of the 
Church; for if he be holy and zealous, then the 
Church triumphs; if he be unbelieving and 
I 227] 



7he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

worldly, then the Church languishes. When the 
Ministry becomes careless, it is a sig^n that God 
is punishing the Church. As often as He would 
bless the Church, He revives the Ministry. When 
the Ministry is self-denying in life and spiritual 
in aim, then the world is vastly impressed, be- 
cause it is reminded of Christ Himself; when the 
tone of the Ministry is frivolous and material, 
then the world is secretly disappointed. Whether 
or not the Ministry is invested with supernatural 
power, and whether or not the minister is in- 
tended to be separate from the people, and to 
follow a habit of life to which other Christians 
are not called, are matters of dispute; but this is 
certain, that next to the preaching of the Gospel 
and the administration of the Sacraments, he is 
the chief channel through which grace comes 
from Christ to His people, and to the outside 
world he stands as the representative of the 
Church and the type of Christian living. It 
therefore concerns every Christian to understand 
the nature and the functions of that Ministry 
which Christ established in the Church, and by 
which He supports His Body. 

As has happened with other doctrines in dis- 
pute, such as that of the Atoning Sacrifice of 
Christ, the difference is not so much about the 
facts of the Ministry as about the theory. If any 
one should ask how many ofificers there were in 
the Ministry at the close of the apostolic period, 
and what were their duties, and how they were 
appointed, and how they were related one to 
another, there is not much difficulty in getting 
an answer, and there would not be much dis- 

[228] 



rhe HOLY MINISTRY 

agreement about the answer. We are dealing 
up to that point with historical facts which are 
distinctly stated in the apostolic writing:s. When 
we inquire into the relation between the Ministry 
and the Lord, and between the Ministry and the 
Church, into the inherent power conferred upon 
the Ministry, and the authority to transmit this 
power to the generation following, into the ques- 
tion whether the Ministry is a priesthood in any 
sense different from that in which all Christ's 
people are priests, or whether Christ's minister 
is not the pastor of human souls to whom Christ 
alone is Priest, then we pass into an atmosohere 
which is thick with controversy and charged with 
keen feeling. With many shades of difference 
between, there are two opposite theories which, 
divide the Church, and whose conflict has been 
one of the calamities of Christendom. One 
maintains that the true minister of Christ must be 
ordained by a particular officer of the Church, 
who alone can convey the grace of the Ministry 
and confer power to administer the Sacraments; 
that the minister so ordained is a priest with 
authority, to offer again, in some sense, the sac- 
rifice of the Lord, changing the bread and wine, 
after some fashion, into the body and blood of 
the Lord; that he has power to remit or to bind 
sins; that through him the Christian approaches 
his Lord, and that the Christian cannot, without 
peril, pass by this minister and seek direct access 
to Christ. It is also held that the gfrace con- 
ferred upon this man at ordination is indelible, 
and that his power to administer the Sacraments 
and to loose sins is not affected by his character 
[229] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

and conduct. According to the other theory, 
the valid minister of Christ is one on whom has 
been conferred a special gift of grace for the holy 
Ministry, and who, in virtue of this g-ift already 
bestowed, is outwardly called to the public work 
of the Ministry by the people of Christ, as he has 
already been inwardly called by the Lord; that 
he should be publicly set apart for the Ministry 
by the laying on of hands; that this is not the 
act of one man, but of the whole Church ; that he 
is the teacher, and the guide, and the servant, 
and the friend of the people, but not their 
governor; and that if he fall into sin and become 
a scandal in the Church, he must at once be 
removed from the Ministry, because he has fallen 
from its grace, and that through an unbelieving 
and unholy man we cannot ordinarily expect 
any blessing to come. It may be said that this 
controversy cannot be of any great importance, 
since it only concerns the theory of the Ministry; 
but as a matter of fact the conditions of salva- 
tion, the relation of the soul to our Lord, the 
efficacy of the means of grace, and the very 
experiences of the religious life, are profoundly 
afifected by the question whether Christ's minister 
is a priest or a pastor. 

According to the apostolic writing^s — to deal 
first with facts about which there can be very 
little difference of opinion — there were six officers 
in the first age of the Church, that is between 
Pentecost, when the Church may be said to have 
been fully established, and the death of the last 
of the Apostles, who were its inspired and 
authoritative rulers. The highest officer was the 

[230] 



rhe HOLT MINISTRY 

Apostle; as St. Paul declares when he gives the 
Ministry in order of rank, " And God hath set 
some in the Church; first apostles." The word 
Apostle has a distinct and most honorable mean- 
ing, for it signifies one sent by Christ, even as 
He was sent by the Father, except that while 
the Lord received from His Father the great 
commission of salvation, the Apostles received 
from Christ the commission to proclaim that 
salvation. The word is however employed both 
in a narrower and a larger sense. Within the 
Gospels it is applied to the Twelve whom Christ 
called from among His disciples and appointed 
to be the missionaries of the world; and accord- 
ing to St. Luke, Christ gave this name to the 
Twelve. " He chose twelve, whom also he named 
apostles." The mimber was fixed by that of the 
tribes of Israel, and, it was felt, must be main- 
tained; so that when Judas Iscariot fell from his 
place Matthias was appointed his successor. 
The Apostles were called " The Twelve," and it 
was their reward that they should sit in the 
kingdom of Heaven upon twelve thrones judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel; and it is written in 
the Revelation of St. John that the wall of the 
city, which is the heavenly Jerusalem and the 
figure of the Church triumphant, " had twelve 
foundations, and in them the names of the twelve 
apostles of the Lamb." According to the idea of 
Pentecostal days, the qualification for an Apostle 
is that he should have had such intercourse with 
Christ that he could be a witness of the resurrec- 
tion; and St. Paul, in claiming to be an Apostle, 
puts forth as the first evidence, " Have not I seen 

[231] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the Lord ? " and again, " He was seen of me also 
as of one born out of due time." It is also 
implied as a second condition that he should 
have received his commission direct from Christ, 
so that after the disciples had selected two who 
fulfilled the former condition that they had seen 
the Lord after His resurrection, they left the 
decisive choice, as they believed, to the Lord, 
through the casting of the lots, and St. Paul 
insists that he received his commission from 
Christ Himself, and is very jealous indeed lest 
it should be supposed he had been called by 
the other Apostles. He is an addition to the 
Apostolate, and was called for a special work, 
and with him the number of the Apostles is com- 
plete. The Twelve, with St. Paul, last called but 
most widely sent, are the glorious company of 
the Apostles. 

As might be expected from the word, it is also 
applied to persons outside this circle, and who 
were indeed not qualified to enter it, but who 
were distinguished servants of Christ, and were 
called to the larger ministry. When St. Paul 
is writing about the evidence for the resurrection, 
he declares that Christ appeared not only to 
Cephas and the Twelve, but also that He was 
seen of all the Apostles. In the Book of Acts, 
Barnabas, as well as Paul, is called an Apostle ; 
and in the Epistle to the Philippians, Epaphro- 
ditus is described as your " messenger," or 
Apostle ; while in the Epistle to the Romans, 
Andronicus and Junias are said to have been of 
note among the Apostles. James the Lord's 
brother, Silvanus, Titus, and many nameless per- 

[232] 



The HOLY MINISTRY 

sons have their place in the larger Apostolate. 
Distinguished divines are inclined to make no 
difference in kind between the thirteen and the 
general Apostolate, and it is quite possible that 
many of its members may have seen the Lord. 
It is another question w^hether they received the 
call direct from a risen Christ, v^hich vs^as given 
to St. Paul from an open heaven, and it seems 
safer to conclude that while there were more 
men entitled to be called Apostles than we had 
thought of, or whose names are even mentioned 
in the sacred writings, the thirteen occupied a 
solitary place. 

The work of an Apostle was not to administer 
Sacraments, but to preach the gospel ; not to 
preside over Churches, but to found them ; not 
to shepherd the souls of Christ's people, but to 
evangelize the world. He was the missionary 
of the Cross, who came to a city to preach Christ, 
who received into the Church the first converts, 
who gave them the body of Christian truth, who 
appointed their first ministers, who visited the 
Churches to see how it fared with them, and who 
advised and directed in cases of difficulty. For 
him there were no bounds of work except that 
he must not intrude upon another Apostle's 
labors ; for him there were no limits of duty ex- 
cept that he must chiefly preach the gospel. His 
province was the Empire, his charge all the 
Churches. The Apostolate ceased of necessity 
when the last Christian died who had seen the 
Lord, and can only be restored if Christ were 
pleased again to reveal Himself from Heaven, 
as He did to St. Paul ; and until He so calls one 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

of His servants no one has any right, in the 
stricter sense of the word, to call himself an 
Apostle. 

The second officer of the Apostolic Church is 
the Prophet ; and the only difference between the 
Prophet of the New Testament Church and the 
Old is that the New Testament Prophet does 
not seem to have committed his revelations to 
writing, and also that he was overshadowed by 
the Apostles. Like the Prophet of the former 
day, he is one whose soul is especially open to 
the influence of God's Spirit, and through whom, 
as through a sensitive medium, the will of God 
can be declared. There are men in every age 
who have quicker ears for truth than their fel- 
lows, no doubt because they have finer souls, and 
the mystics are in measure, the order of proph- 
ets continued in the Christian Church. The 
Prophet of the Apostolic period was possible, 
then, because there was at that time a special 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit. " On My ser- 
vants and on My handmaidens I will pour out in 
those days of My Spirit, and they shall proph- 
esy." When this period ceased, the order also 
ceased, and cannot be restored until the same 
baptism of the Holy Ghost be again given, of 
which the signs will doubtless be the spiritual 
gifts of ApostoHc days. Among the spiritual 
gifts St. Paul ranked prophecy very high: 
" Desire spiritual gifts," he wrote, " but chiefly 
that ye may prophesy ; for he that prophesieth, 
speaketh unto men, to edification and exhorta- 
tion and comfort." 

The third order which follows upon that of 

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The HOLT MINISTRY 

Prophet is Teacher; and although the exact 
duties and sphere of the Teacher in the early 
Church are obscure, one may safely conclude 
that he represented our scholar, or theologian. 
It was for him, we suggest, to follow up the work 
of the Apostle who declared the facts of Christ's 
Hfe and the conditions of Christ's salvation, and 
to reinforce the Prophet who quickened and 
comforted the hearts of Christians by his spirit- 
ual and heavenly exhortation. The Teacher 
would arrange the facts and apply the revelation, 
and reduce this body of truth to an orderly and 
convenient form, so that the people might carry 
it in their minds the more easily. It would also 
fall to him to remove the difficulties which met 
new converts in the gospel, and to defend the 
gospel from attack. While the Apostle and the 
Prophet, in the special sense of the words, ceased 
with the first century, the Teacher is a perma- 
nent officer of the Church, to whom the Church 
has owed more than she has ever acknowledged, 
and whom the Church has often been ready to 
persecute. As in the first days, he has no parish 
and no congregation, but lives where he pleases, 
and goes where he wills ; and the scholar of 
Christ is the servant of all Christ's people, but 
chiefly of his fellow-ministers ; and when Ave 
consider what the Church has owed to those 
men — Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Hooker — 
we know she can have no greater gift until there 
be once more among us Apostles and Prophets. 
The fourth officer in the Church — still pro- 
ceeding in order of rank — is the Evangelist, and 
in the list given in the Epistle to the Ephesians 

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7he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

he is placed third. Christ, St. Paul writes, gave 
*' some Apostles, some Prophets, and some 
Evangelists ; " and there are two illustrations of 
the Evangelist given in the Apostolic period. 
One is Timothy, who seems to have been sent 
by the Apostles as an Apostolic delegate, ap- 
pointing Church officers, and administering dis- 
cipline, as well as declaring and maintaining the 
truth. The other is Philip, who happens to be 
one of the seven, but who was also an Evangelist, 
and as an Evangelist held a higher place than 
that of deacon. It was he who at the bidding 
of an Angel met the Ethiopian treasurer return- 
ing from Jerusalem in despair of truth, and 
taught him the way of God, and it was he who 
preached Christ to the city of Samaria. He, 
also, was the delegate of the Apostles ; and when 
it was known at Jerusalem that Samaria had re- 
ceived the word of God, Peter and John went 
down and laid their hands upon the converts, 
and they received the Holy Ghost. Philip at 
least had the power of working miracles, and it 
may be taken for granted that the Evangelists 
exercised special gifts, both of power and author- 
ity, through their connection with the Apostles. 
Such gifts are not continued, but the office is 
one which may well be permanent in the Chris- 
tian Church. If God has bestowed upon any 
one of His ministers the distinct gift of preach- 
ing the gospel to unbelievers and winning the 
outside world to Christ, a gift which is different 
from that of exposition and edification, then it 
seems wise that such a man should be set aside 
for this office, and that he should receive a com- 

[236] 



7he HOLY MINISTRY 

mission to go wherever the door opens, and to 
gather Christ's lost sheep into the fold. The 
missioner is as much needed at home as the mis- 
sionary is abroad, and the organization of the 
Christian Church will not be complete until the 
order of Evangelists be restored, and here we 
mean the Evangelist of the type of Philip. Unfo 
other men has been given the faculty of over- 
sight, including arrangement and management, 
and it would be an excellent thing for the non- 
episcopal Churches to have officers who would 
set in order troubled affairs, examine into 
duty neglected by ministers and congregation, 
strengthen the weak parts in the Church's 
machinery, and by counsel and encouragement 
put heart into those who are losing hope. The 
Scots Church, which has never had any leaning 
to prelacy, found it useful after the Reformation 
to have an officer, called the superintendent, who 
exercised the practical, though not spiritual, 
powers of a bishop. This is the Evangelist after 
the type of Timothy. 

Besides those four officers, two of whom are 
confined of necessity to the Apostolic period, 
while two may very well be permanent in the 
Christian Church, we find two other officers who 
before the close of the first century have an es- 
tablished position, and who remain unto this day. 
The chief distinction between them and the other 
four is that while the four belong to the Church 
universal, going whither they may be sent, and 
having as it were no parish, except the world, 
the fifth and sixth officers are localized and have 
their sphere in one congregation. One is that 

[237] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

minister of Christ who is called sometimes an 
elder or presbyter, and sometimes an episcopus 
or bishop ; and fortunately the controversy re- 
garding the identity in rank and ofifice of the 
elder and bishop in ApostoHc days has been set- 
tled by the greatest English theologian of our 
century, and no one now questions the fact that 
presbyter and episcopus are to all intents and 
purposes synonymous. The words have, how- 
ever, different origins and bear witness to the 
two streams which flowed into the Christian 
community. Episcopus was the name given to 
one of the chief officers in the innumerable asso- 
ciations for social, religious, and political pur- 
poses which existed throughout the Roman 
Empire during the early centuries of Christian 
history. The Church was not the first society to 
which the Christian convert had belonged, for he 
may have been a member of a trades' union, or 
an athletic club, or a literary association, or a 
financial company. Society at that day was sub- 
divided into guilds and clubs, and the Christian 
Church, although, as we have pointed out, some- 
thing very different, would seem at first sight 
only another association more kindly, and more 
spiritual than its neighbors. When the Chris- 
tians in any place had been formed into a local 
Church, and when an officer was required to 
receive the offerings of the Church and to dis- 
tribute them among the poor, to show kindness 
to travelling Christians, and to exercise disci- 
pline among the members of the society, to be, 
in short, the president of this new body, what 
could be more natural than that he should be 

[238] 



The HOLT MINISTRY 

called the episcopus? and therefore, when St. 
Paul is writing to the Philippian Church, a 
Church that was chiefly Gentile, he addresses 
not the elders, but the bishops. 

Among the Jews from early days society had 
been based upon the family, and the rulers of the 
people were the elders. The elders played no 
little part in Old Testament history; and when 
the synagogue was instituted, they became its 
chiefs, sitting in the place of honor and repre- 
senting authority in the community. The Chris- 
tian Church was born within Judaism ; and when 
it set up house for itself, the Church adopted the 
Jewish system of government -by elders. The 
office was not so much created as continued, and 
we find the elders ruling the Church of Jerusa- 
lem, which, of course, was Jewish, just as the 
same men might have ruled in the synagogue. 
While St. Paul does not mention the presbyters 
in his roll of Church officers, very likely for the 
reason that they were local and not universal in 
their office, he takes care to ordain elders to 
take charge of Churches which he founded. He 
laid upon the elders of the Church the charge 
of the flock over which *' the Holy Ghost had 
made them episcopi." It is the elder who is to 
feed the sheep, and it is for the elder the sick are 
to send. The elders are honorably united with 
the Apostles and the government of the Church 
of Jerusalem, and the decree of the first Church 
council ran in the name of the Apostles and 
elders. While in the earher days the offerings 
of charity from the Gentiles to the Jews were 
forwarded to the elders for distribution at Jeru- 

[239] 



ne DOCTRINES <?/ GRACE 

salem, and while the episcopus would be mainly 
occupied with charity in the beginning of his 
Christian career, this officer soon threw off the 
charge of financial affairs and was devoted to 
the spiritual oversight of the people, and the 
elder or bishop of Apostolic days corresponds 
almost exactly to the minister or clergyman in 
charge of a parish and congregation. 

Very soon, and from the force of circum- 
stances, it was necessary that a Christian con- 
gregation should have two officers, one to attend 
to its spiritual affairs, and another to its temporal, 
and before the conversion of St. Paul the Church 
of Jerusalem had made this division of labor. 
They had selected seven men full of faith and 
of the Holy Ghost, and having ordained them 
and so declared them to be spiritual officers of 
Christ's Church, they committed to their charge 
the offerings of Christ's people. It is true that 
the seven were not called deacons ; but things 
exist before their names, and there is no doubt 
they were the beginning of the diaconate, the 
order next to that of the elder, and which com- 
pletes the organization of the Church in Apos- 
tolic days. It is not safe to take the seven as 
the type of deacons, for two of them, Stephen 
and Philip, were preachers and witnesses, and 
the position of the seven seems to have been at 
least equal to that of presbyters ; but the work 
which they were called to do is that which after- 
wards belonged to the deacon. From the quali- 
fications for the two offices, as stated in the first 
Epistle to Timothy, it is evident that the duty of 
the presbyter " was more spiritual," for he must 

[240] 



rhe HOLY MINISTRY 

be a man apt to teach, while the deacon is to be 
one " not double-tongued and not greedy of 
base gain," a stronger word than that used in the 
character of the elder. While the deacon grad- 
ually became the assistant of the presbyter in 
spiritual duties, he was, to begin with, the al- 
moner of the Church. We are reminded both 
of the unity and humility of Christian service by 
his very name, which is simply servant, and is 
the name by which an Apostle is proud to de- 
scribe himself; for from the Apostle to the dea- 
con, and from the deacon to the most obscure 
person who works in Christ's house, all are ser- 
vants of the Lord. 

When we pass from the facts of the Holy Min- 
istry in the Apostolic period to the authority 
of the Ministry in all periods, then we are among 
burning questions which have set men's minds 
on fire, and in the flames thereof charity itself 
has often been consumed. It is perhaps an in- 
evitable fault of human nature that men should 
be jealous about their office, and that ministers 
of Christ holding different theories of their au- 
thority should allow the personal factor to enter 
into the discussion of Orders. As the word for 
Orders, and all the words which have to do with 
appointment to Christian offices, came from the 
province of civil government, possibly some 
flavor of secular ambition and strife has clung 
to them, and the Church, in adopting the graded 
system of political government, has run some 
danger of turning the Kingdom of Christ into a 
worldly state. It was not without reason that 
the Master insisted upon the grace of humility, 

[241] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

and rebuked Apostles who desired to exceed 
their fellows in anything except in sacrifice, and 
that He declares that He alone was Master and 
that His servants were brethren. Perhaps one 
may be too much influenced by the appearance 
of things, but certainly one cannot compare the 
hierarchy of the Church when the Church was in 
the height of her worldly glory — the titles and 
the pomp and the riches and the luxury, I will 
not add the unashamed vices — with the simplic- 
ity of the Ministry in the days of the Apostles, 
without amazement and the uneasy feeling that 
all this rank and show is of the world, and not 
of Christ. 

The dispute regarding the exact authority of 
the holy Ministry is really twofold. First, what 
it is ; and second, whence it came ; and although 
the two questions are closely linked together — 
the question, that is, of sacerdotalism and the 
other question of Apostolic succession, to use 
the familiar terms of this controversy — it is con- 
venient to take first the one and then the other. 
Was it according to the will of Christ (and is it a 
matter of fact) that the Christian minister be a 
priest, or was it not Christ's intention (and the 
state of things in Apostolic days) that he should 
be a pastor? If the matter can be settled by 
names, then the argument can be closed at once ; 
for although the minister of Christ is called, as 
we have seen. Apostle, Prophet, Teacher, Evan- 
gelist, Elder, Overseer, Deacon, as well as Shep- 
herd, Leader, Ruler, he is never, as an officer 
of the Church, called priest in the New Testa- 
ment Scripture. Amid this wealth of descrip-* 

[242] 



the HOLT MINISTRY 

tion, designed to bring out every side of his 
office and the distinction between the various 
duties of the Ministry, one word is carefully 
omitted and ostentatiously refused. It was the 
word most commonly used to describe a minister 
of religion in that day, and the word used not 
only in heathen religions, but also in the Jewish 
Church — the Church from whose bosom Chris- 
tianity sprang. If it should be said that it was 
necessary for Christianity to avoid the terminol- 
ogy of Judaism in order that the new religion 
might not be confounded with the old, then why 
was the local and permanent Minister of the 
Christian Church called an Elder, and the Syna- 
gogue, as it were, reconstituted in the upper 
rooms of the young Church? Was it to make 
a distinction between the Synagogue, wherein 
there was no sacrifice except that of praise, 
which is ever to be continued, and the Temple, 
where there were the sacrifices of blood, which 
had been for ever aboHshed ? Is there not a pre- 
sumption that Christianity began without any 
sacerdotal element, and is a religion in which 
sacerdotalism was to have no place, when the 
new religion, having a choice, called her minis- 
ter, not a priest after the fashion of the Temple, 
but an elder after the example of the Syna- 
gogue? 

Things, however, exist before words, and words 
are then made for their description; and it may 
be suggested that the office of ministering priest 
was implied in the Christian worship, although 
the name had not yet been given to the officiating 
minister. If there be no Sacerdotium in the 

[243] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

New Testament Scriptures, yet, if there be a 
Sacrificium, the other must follow, for a sacrifice 
demands a priest. Was there any sacrifice which 
the presbyter could offer, and in ofiferins: con- 
stitute himself a priest ? Certainly there was a 
sacrifice which he was bound to offer, and that 
was the living sacrifice of himself as a man 
bought by the Blood of Christ and consecrated 
to His service; but this was a sacrifice which all 
his fellow-Christians could not only offer with 
him, but were bound to offer, and in this sense 
all Christian folk are priests unto God. An 
atoning sacrifice there was none for him or any 
other man to offer, for Christ had offered Himself 
once in the end of the world, and now our one 
Ministering Priest has '' entered into the Holy 
Place to make intercession for us." This sacrifice 
cannot be repeated, but it can be remembered, 
and in the remembrance of the Lord's death the 
whole congregation unite: " The cup of blessing 
which we bless, is it not the Communion of the 
Blood of Christ ? The bread which we break, is 
it not the Communion of the Body of Christ ? " 
There can therefore be no ministering^ priest 
because he has no sacrifice to minister, and the 
word is not used because the thing does not 
exist. 

It may also be added that the spirit of Chris- 
tianity has no place for the sacerdotal idea, 
because that idea creates an order of men who 
stand between God and their fellows, and through 
whose ministrations the sinner can alone be 
accepted of God. Nowhere in the Gospels does 
Christ intimate that if a person desired to ap- 

[244] 



Ue HOLT MINISTRY 

proach Him he must come through an Apostle. 
More than once He rebuked His Apostles be- 
cause they came between Him and seeking 
souls. He was accessible to all and easy to be 
entreated; more accessible than His Apostles 
were, more gentle in His ways. There never 
was any religion so informal and so unofficial as 
Christianity, whose Lord invites all to come to 
Him, and declares He will cast none out who 
come, Who answered every prayer, and responded 
even to the tears of a penitent. Has Jesus, 
because He passed into the heavens, withdrawn 
Himself from human souls? has He given to 
inferior men that right of mediation which He 
sharply denied to the Apostles? Is He now, 
remote and awful, refusing to hear any confes- 
sion unless it be made first through a fellow- 
sinner, refusing forgiveness unless it be made 
through the mouth of that fellow-sinner ? It 
may be so; but if so, the Lord is not that "" same 
Jesus." It may be that a man now stands be- 
tween the penitent and the Lord; but if so, there 
is a gulf which cannot be bridged between the 
Church of to-day and the Church of the first 
days. 

Our second question is the origin of ministerial 
authority, and the question here is whether a 
Ministry is vaHd in virtue of the grace bestowed 
upon the minister which appears in his life and 
work, which also is recognized and accepted by 
the Church, or whether his Ministry is alone valid 
who has a commission received by transmission 
from the original pastoral authority. No doubt 
there is something which appeals to the imagina- 

[245] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

tion in the idea of this long and august succes- 
sion. That the Apostles received a deposit of 
grace which they passed to bishops, that one 
bishop handed this sacred treasure to another, on 
to the present day; that every man on whose head 
a bishop in this succession laid his hands was in- 
vested with such supernatural power that the 
child whom he christened in the name of the 
Holy Trinity became a child of God; and that 
every time he consecrated the elements of bread 
and wine they changed into the body and blood 
of Christ. This provision seems to give the most 
perfect security for the administration of the 
Divine grace, as, on the other hand, it separates 
with the utmost rigor between those who belong 
to the Church and those who are outside the 
covenant; and, indeed, so uncompromising and 
so automatic is the principle, that if both the 
officiating priest in the Sacrament and the re- 
ceiving communicant be rank unbelievers, yet the 
one can give and the other receive the body and 
blood of Christ. 

While on first sight this theory is imposing 
by its thoroughness, on closer examination it is 
encompassed with difficulties; and the first is 
this, that no such deposit of sacerdotal grace 
was ever made to the Apostles as Apostles, and 
therefore there was nothing which they could 
transmit to the bishops following. It is gene- 
rally agreed that Christ conferred this authority, 
if He did at all, on the evening of Easter Day, 
when, the doors being shut. He appeared in the 
midst of His disciples, and said, ** Peace be unto 
you." He also breathed on them, and said, 

[246] 



The HOLT MINISTRY 

"Receive ye the Holy Ghost"; and then follow 
the special words of the commission, *' Whoseso- 
ever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them, 
and whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained/' 
What may be intended by the remitting and 
retaining of sins is just now outside our concern. 
What we require to know for our purpose is not 
the contents of the commission, but the persons 
to whom it was given. They are called in St. 
John's Gospel the " disciples," and in St. Luke's 
Gospel the company is described as the " eleven 
and they that were with them"; that is to say, 
not the Apostles only, but Cleopas and his friend 
who had returned from Emmaus, and a number 
of other disciples. Christ conferred this power 
not upon one class, the Ministry in the Church, 
but upon the whole Church; not upon a few, but 
upon the society; so that it is the whole body 
of Christians which received this deposit, and 
the whole body who can transmit it to the genera- 
tions following. Again, if you please, we have a 
priesthood, but it is the priesthood of the whole 
body, and no grace can be transmitted through 
the line of apostolical succession which cannot 
be fully transmitted by the whole body of the 
Church. 

The second weakness in this theory is the 
uncertainty of the method by which the grace 
can be transmitted. If it be by the laying on of 
hands, then this beautiful rite had a very wide 
use in ancient times, and was employed not only 
for the ordination of a minister but the admission 
of an ordinary member and the readmission of a 
penitent, and the Pope declares that by itself the 

[247] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

imposition of hands signifies nothing definite. If 
it is by the words which are used, then it is in 
dispute what the words ought to be, and there 
have been many different forms. When Cyprian 
describes the ordination of a bishop with great 
minuteness, he does not refer to the imposition 
of hands. According to Dr. Hatch, '' all the 
elements of appointment to ecclesiastical offices 
were also the elements of appointment to civil 
offices," namely, " Nomination, Election, Ap- 
proval, and the Declaration of Election by a com- 
petent officer. . . ." On the morning after his 
election the bishop is escorted to his chair by the 
other bishops who took part in the election, and 
at once enters on the active duty of a bishop by 
preaching a sermon and celebrating the Eucharist. 
One also gathers from the directions which St. 
Paul gave to Titus to appoint elders in each 
city that the election was the same as that of a 
Roman magistrate, for the word employed means 
to elect by popular vote. It is also worthy of 
note that St. Paul was called to the Apostleship 
by Christ Himself, and insisted that his orders 
were of Christ and not of man; and when he 
was ordained at Antioch in recognition of the 
grace he had received, he was ordained not by 
Apostles, nor yet by presbyters, but by the whole 
body of the Church. '' Then they," that is, the 
Church, '' held a special fast and prayed, and laid 
their hands upon them, and gave them leave to 
depart." When it was necessary to elect the 
seven, the Church was commanded by the 
Apostles to discover men of honest report, full 
of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom; when the 

[248] 



The HOLY MINISTRY 

Church had elected the seven, as men who had 
the Holy Ghost, they were ordained. Timothy 
was ordained by the laying on of the hands of 
the presbytery and also by the ordination of the 
Apostles, but it is stated with marked emphasis 
that a gift had come to him by prophecy. We 
gather, therefore, from the history of the Apostolic 
period and early days that the great qualification 
for the ministers was the possession of the Holy 
Ghost; that the Church selected for office men 
that were so qualified, whether a Paul, or a 
Stephen, or a Timothy; that they appointed 
them to office as a rule by the laying on of 
hands, and that the validity of the office was not 
dependent on the form of ordination, about which 
to this day there is no certainty, but upon the 
spiritual gifts which the minister received from 
Christ. We therefore conclude not only that 
there is no special gift which the Apostolic 
officer can alone confer, but that if there were, 
there is no certain method by which he could 
transmit it. 

Another unfortunate defect in this theory is 
the want of a continued and verified line of 
officers to transmit the grace, if it had been 
given, and if there were any way of transmitting 
it. When the deposit is so sacred and the want 
for it so great, and when, indeed, without an 
unbroken line of trustees there can be no minis- 
terial or sacramental grace in the Church, one 
could have hoped that the history, of this fine, 
upon which so much depends, would have been 
as distinct as the conditions of salvation. One 
would have expected to find a table by which 

[249] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the bishop of to-day could trace his descent from 
the Apostles — an unbroken chain with every link 
in its place. But what does a perplexed seeker 
after truth find when he turns to this genealogy ? 
That an Anglican bishop traces his succession 
to the Roman Church, and the Roman Church 
informs us promptly and with emphasis that he 
is simply an unordained and unconsecrated lay- 
man; that a bishop of the Holy Orthodox 
Church of the East has true Orders by the 
admission of the Roman See, but yet the Eastern 
and Western Churches are separate; that the 
Roman Church cannot by the widest stretch of 
historical charity connect itself by a continuous 
line of bishops with the Apostles; that there is 
a blank space between the Apostles and the first 
historical Bishop of Rome; that there is a grave 
uncertainty when the historical episcopate was 
created; that there is no evidence of the ordina- 
'tion of a bishop by the Apostles; that the identi- 
fication of the Evangelist Timothy and James of 
Jerusalem with bishops is only a plausible sug- 
gestion; that the early episcopate differed very 
much, as a matter of fact, and by general consent, 
from the episcopate in later days; that some of 
the early Churches, whose position in the Church 
Catholic cannot be denied, had, so far as appears, 
no bishops, and that "the bishop was elected by 
the presbyters — to quote the words of St. Jerome, 
" Just as an army elects a general, or as deacons 
appoint one of themselves whom they know to 
be diligent and call him an archdeacon." Amid 
this wilderness of uncertainty and controversy 
and speculation and inconsistence, the path of 

[250] 



The HOLY MINISTRY 

the succession can often be traced with difficulty, 
and is sometimes lost, and it is surely too great 
a burden upon reason to insist that a Christian 
must beHeve that along this wandering and broken 
way can alone come the sure blessing of the 
Divine grace. For this is not like the glory of 
the highway of the Prophet, wherein the wayfar- 
ing man, even though he be a fool, shall not err. 
While one is bound to point out the patent 
difficulty of this theory, it does not follow that 
he is indifferent to the value of the episcopate 
or the service which the bishop had rendered to 
the unity of the Christian Church. Although 
the episcopate may not be found during the 
Apostolic period, and although it may not have 
been created by inspired authority, of which, I 
submit, there is no evidence, there were excellent 
reasons for its establishment. For one thing, 
every body of officers, from the Board of a 
Company up to the rulers in Christ's Church, 
must have a president, and it is not desirable 
that he be too frequently changed. If he be a 
wise man, and able to rule with knowledge and 
with grace, it is better that he be continued in 
his office; and that the Church in that particular 
place should have a strong head. When perse- 
cutions came and some one was needed to hearten 
the Church, it was natural that a man of courage 
and faith should come to the front, and that the 
power should be concentrated in his hands. 
When heresies sprang up, and there was danger 
that the truth of God should be lost, it was well 
that it should have a responsible guardian. As 
the number of presbyters increased and the duties 

[251] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

of the office multiplied, it was desirable that there 
should be an overseer to take charge of them as 
they took charge of the people. The organiza- 
tion of the Church, as the witness to the Lord 
and the defender of the faith, and the shepherd of 
souls, culminated in the office of bishop. With- 
out the episcopate in the days of persecution and 
confusion, when society was falling to pieces on 
every side, and the Church was the only hope of 
stability, it may be urged with great force that 
the visible unity of the Church could not have 
been preserved, and her disruption would have 
been a disaster of the first magnitude both to 
religion and to society. It ought also to be 
frankly admitted that it is a good thing for the 
Church to have men of recognized authority and 
wide experience, to whom her ministers can go 
for spiritual and practical advice, and who shall 
be in truth their father in God. It is a historical 
fact that the Churches under episcopal govern- 
ment have had a more profound conviction of the 
duty of unity, and have been less open to the 
storms of individualistic self-will, than the non- 
episcopal communions, and the way in which a 
handful of non-episcopal Christians, being 
thwarted in some scheme of their own fancy, will 
threaten to break up the Church of their faith 
and baptism is to my mind one of the strongest 
arguments for some form of episcopal govern- 
ment. 

Whether government by presbyters or by 
bishops be more expedient for the good of a 
Christian Church, is an open question, and very 
likely a compromise between the two systems 

[252] 



The HOLT MINISTRY 

would be best; but it is another question alto- 
gether, whether it is the will of Christ that the 
supreme government of the Church should be so 
invested in bishops that any other system of gov- 
ernment be judged an act of disobedience to the 
Lord, and the persons under its charge be placed 
outside the promised blessing. This is a daring 
position to take up in face of a divided Christen- 
dom, and there can be no other final settlement 
of the matter in dispute than an appeal to the 
facts of religion. It is really futile since the 
Reformation for any single Church to claim the 
monopoly of the grace of orders or of the sac- 
raments. Does the Church of Rome, which 
upon the theory of Apostolic succession has the 
surest Orders, foster a piety more intelligent and 
spiritual than the Church of England ? Have the 
Wesleyan Methodists of England and the Cal- 
vinistic Methodists of Wales done less for religion 
according to their province than the Anglican 
Church ? Has the Kirk of Scotland been less 
faithful to her nation or made less of her children 
than the ancient Church to whose heritage she 
succeeded ? Has the Sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper been less efficacious for comfort and holy 
living when administered by a presbyter, ordained 
by fellow-presbyters, than by a priest on whom a 
bishop in full communion with Rome has laid his 
hands ? When one asks those questions, and 
many more of the same kind might be asked, he 
is not to be understood as disparaging any body 
of Christ's people, for he rejoices to recognize the 
grace of God in all schools and in all sections of 
the Church — in St. Augustine and in Clement of 

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rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

Alexandria, in Tauler and in Thomas a Kempis, 
in Philip Melanchthon and in Francis Xavier, in 
Bishop Andrews and John Bunyan, in Pusey and 
in Spurgeon — nor is he seeking to unchurch any 
of Christ's disciples, or to limit the grace of the 
Lord, but he is rather trying to magnify that 
idea of the Church Catholic which includes within 
its visible bounds every true disciple of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and that Apostolic idea of the holy 
Ministry, as old as St. Paul's ordination at Anti- 
och, which recognizes as a vaHd minister of Christ 
every one who, having been called of God, and 
manifestly prepared by the Holy Spirit, shall 
therefore be called of Christ's people and ordained 
by them to the preaching of the Word and the 
administration of the Sacraments. 



[254] 



rke SACRAMENTS 



XIII 

The SACRAMENTS 

IT was a great theologian who defined a Sac- 
rament to be the Visible Form of an Invisible 
Grace, and this definition is the more felicitous 
because it not only describes with accuracy cer- 
tain ordinances of Christ, but also allies them to 
what may be called the Sacramental Law of 
Nature. It has been an unfortunate disability of 
human thought to distinguish so sharply between 
what is seen and what is unseen, as to place the 
supernatural in contrast to the natural, and to 
deny the unity of the universe. It was part of the 
Divine wisdom of our Lord to ignore this distinc- 
tion in His teaching and ever to treat nature as 
the body in which the spiritual was incarnate, and 
as the parable which was its revelation. What 
we saw and handled, corresponded with what we 
thought and felt, so that the spiritual, which had 
appealed to our mind, became real to our senses, 
and as one commits to printed words upon a page 
w^hat he has imagined, so we were to recognize in 
the phenomena of nature the shapes of the mys- 
teries of grace. Christ did not compare the 
spiritual to the natural, but He was accustomed 
to identify them, so that the sign became the 
thing signified. He was the true vine whose sap 
was to be the principle of fertility in human souls; 

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rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

He was the light which would illuminate every 
human mind ; He was the bread which would 
support the life of the soul; He was the water 
which would satisfy its thirst; He was the seed 
of indestructible vigor which might be cast into 
the ground but would spring up to future har- 
vest. As He moved through nature it became 
the transparent veil, through which the spiritual 
will ever shine — a vast and Divine Sacrament. 

Although we have not the vision of our Master, 
and impressions from the outside are apt to fall 
on us like snow upon a blind man's face, yet we 
are not quite indifferent to the spiritual effects 
of the world into which we have been born and 
which laps us round on every side. Our emo- 
tions correspond to the fresh beauty of sunrise, 
the golden glory of sunset, the awful majesty of 
a thunderstorm, the austere purity of the ever- 
lasting snow, the helpless loneliness of mid ocean, 
and the joyful hope of the spring. The emotion 
may be too delicate for any than a poet's speech, 
yet for even commonplace people it is real ; and 
they have the sensation of seeing their subtlest 
feelings cast into the most magnificent form and 
also being moved through their senses to thoughts 
which never otherwise would have visited their 
minds. No word of preacher, or of book would 
have so suddenly and thoroughly affected them, 
and the effect with successive impacts becomes a 
part of themselves. If it seems strange that souls 
should be fed by the Sacrament of the Bread and 
Wine, because the soul is spiritual and the ele- 
ments are physical, it is quite as strange but it is 
perfectly true that the character of a people is 

[ 258 ] 



The SACRAMENTS 

largely shaped by the scenes amid which they live, 
so that an Italian peasant is the most volatile and 
gayest-hearted of men beside the blue Mediter- 
ranean; and the Highland Celt, is the most 
sombre and reverential, living at the base of hills 
on which the mists are hanging. So the physical 
is again the instrument of the spiritual and men's 
souls are shaped by the Word which dwells within 
nature. 

We carry about with us in our very constitu- 
tions as human beings an evidence for the sac- 
ramental principle, for we have not only the 
Eternal particle of the soul, but .also the habita- 
tion of the body. It is not possible to imagine 
any human being as a disembodied spirit, and 
it is not likely there could be such a state of 
existence. We cannot be utterly unclothed; if 
one body be removed another must take its place, 
but it were less than the truth to think of the 
body as a mere vesture which can be put off and 
on like a cloak, for the body and the soul are so 
vitally connected that the soul may be said to 
penetrate and vitalize the body; to be the spring 
of its life and vigor. Through the body the sen- 
sations of the outer world pass into the soul, and 
through the same body the soul expresses itself 
and exercises its power. While the humility of 
the body veils the glory of the soul, as the ele- 
ments in the Sacrament are a poor dwelling-place 
for the Lord, yet the soul is able so to transform 
the body that by and by, we catch the light within 
through the dim windows, and a man's face be- 
comes the revelation of his character. As the 
Word comes to the elements and behold a Sacra- 

1259] 



7he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

ment, so the soul comes to the body and behold a 
man. 

The crowning illustration of this truth is found 
in the Incarnation of our Lord wherein deity has 
been united to humanity in a mystery. What 
an unbeheving Jew beheld, was a peasant of 
Galilee, of lowly appearance and humble dress, 
who had no home and no honor, who was 
despised and rejected of men. What St. John 
and the Apostles saw was the Son of God, 
almighty, all wise, all loving, the very image of 
the Eternal Father. And the Deity and the 
Humanity are so united that they cannot be 
separated, so that whatsoever the Lord doeth 
as man. He doeth also as God. Through His 
Humanity streamed the efficacy of His Deity, and 
it was enough to touch the hem of His g^arment 
to be saved, and His Humanity is so entirely 
part of His personality that in the midst of the 
Throne, St. John saw the Lamb as He once 
was slain. The Sacramental Law which is the 
revelation of the unseen by the seen, and of 
grace by nature, which had been exhibited first 
in the creation of the world, next in the nature 
of man, came to its height in the person of our 
Lord Jesus Christ Whose Humanity was as the 
Bread and Wine and Whose Deity is as the in- 
dwelling and Eternal virtue. 

During the Dispensation of the Old Testament 
the Church was constantly educated and sup- 
ported by Sacraments which at first were numer- 
ous and general, and then became limited and 
definite. The rainbow upon the cloud assured the 
ancient world that God would not ag:ain cover it 

[260] 



rhe SACRAMENTS 

with a deluge; the gift of Isaac to Abraham in 
his old age, was the pledge of God's faithfulness; 
the burning bush in the wilderness declared the 
presence of God to Moses, a common bush, yet 
a fire with God; a pillar of fire by night and a 
pillar of cloud by day leading the children of 
Israel were the signs of the Divine guidance. 
Aaron's rod which blossomed and the dew on 
Gideon's fleece and the light which shone from 
the breastplate of the High Priest, and the Ark 
of the Covenant, were all Sacraments, assuring 
God's people of His presence and unfailing grace. 
There were, however, two rites . of the ancient 
Church which chiefly deserve to be called Sacra- 
ments and which were indeed a forerunner of the 
two Sacraments of the New Dispensation. One 
was Circumcision wherein by a sign in his very 
flesh a child was admitted into the Church of 
God, and pledged to holiness; and the other was 
the sacrifice and feast of the Passover wherein the 
Hebrew people were not only reminded of the 
mighty deliverances of God when He brought 
their fathers out of Egypt but were also fed and 
strengthened for the battle of life. The one was 
the Sacrament of union whereby the soul was 
brought into covenant with God, and made a 
member of the nation which may be said to have 
been in type and prophecy the Body of the 
Lord ; the other was the Sacrament whereby the 
fellowship between God and the nation was main- 
tained. 

While the Lord by His teaching and spirit did 
not confirm but abolished the sacrificial system 
of the ancient Church, and while He insisted that 
[ 261 ] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the Kingdom of God was within a man and that 
what the Father desired were worshippers in 
spirit and in truth, yet He in Whom two natures 
met, and Who is Himself the point of unity in 
the universe of God was not indifferent to the 
necessity and service of Sacraments. It was a 
great demand which He made on faith and it 
was needful to sustain it by outward signs, so 
that' the senses should become the reinforcement 
of the soul, and a man should be better able to 
believe in the Grace of God when he saw it pre- 
sented without Him in a symbol. For this end 
He commanded two rites which are altogether 
perfect in the selection of the visible means, and 
in the suggestion of the invisible grace. If any 
one should hear Christ's words and believe in the 
Lord so that he was willing to be His disciple 
and to carry His cross, then let him be baptized 
in water to signify that his sin had been cleansed 
away and that he had become a new creature, 
that his old man had disappeared as if he had 
died and that he had been buried in baptism 
with Christ. Let him come up from this baptism 
with a new name and enter on a new life, and by 
his baptismal vows let him be consecrated for 
ever to the Lord. Without doubt the perfect 
idea of baptism is reaHzed when one who has 
come to the years of discretion makes his profes- 
sion of faith in the Lord, knowing what he has 
done and having counted the cost, and then is 
immersed in the waters of baptism. But the 
same picture of spiritual things is still retained, 
although the water be only sprinkled on the face 
and although the recipient of the rite be an 

[262] 



The SACRAMENTS 

infant whose parents place it with prayer and 
vows within the Church of God, as mothers 
placed their children in the arms of the Lord 
Jesus. The purest thing in nature, cold water, 
is used to represent and to convey the cleansing 
grace of Christ's blood and spirit. And by a 
speaking symbol the soul is made a member of 
the Holy Body of Christ. 

As the disciple of the Lord will be dependent 
upon Divine grace from day to day, requiring 
forgiveness as often as he sins, and strength as 
often as he is weak, he must live in constant 
fellowship with the Lord, receiving grace for 
grace till he come to perfection in Christ Jesus. 
As he accomplishes his great pilgrimage he re- 
quires to be inwardly refreshed and comforted, 
and therefore Christ not only makes him to pass 
through the waters of the Red Sea wherein he is 
separated from Egypt for ever, and becomes 
God's free man, but He also spreads for him a 
table in the wilderness so that he may eat and 
drink and go on his way rejoicing till he come to 
the land of promise. And to symbolize this con- 
stant communion with Himself, Christ instituted 
the Sacrament of the Bread and Wine. By 
Bread, which is the richness of the harvest and 
the stafif of life, is signified that Body of the Lord 
— His Divine and human fulness — which is the 
food of the soul, and by Wine which is the very 
essence of the vine and the gathered vigor of 
creation, is represented that blood of the Lord 
which was His life and which is poured out to be 
the salvation of the world. As one eats this Bread 
and drinks this Wine so can he and so ought he 

[263] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

to receive the fulness of the Lord and the cleans- 
ing of His blood. The power of God which per- 
meates all creation cometh as it were to a height 
in these elements of Water and Bread and Wine, 
and through them sanctifies, and satisfies, and 
glorifies the soul. 

If one takes a generous reading of our defini- 
tion of a Sacrament, then no doubt there are not 
two, but many Sacraments, for all the sacred acts 
of life, and especially such as are symbols may 
be called Sacraments, from the meal in which 
we establish the covenant of hospitality, to the 
kiss with which we seal the covenant of love. 
Certainly it is not without reason that the act of 
Ordination by which the Minister of Jesus Christ 
is set apart for his sacred duties or the intimate 
union between a man and woman in marriage 
are called Sacraments, for indeed both are deep 
and holy mysteries, and the outward shapes of 
spiritual realities. Baptism and the Lord's sup- 
per are set in a place by themselves because they 
were instituted by the Lord, and because they 
are an obligation upon all His disciples, so that 
if one desires to enter into the Church visible, 
it must be through the laver of baptism, and if 
any one would give his soul the full benefits of 
the Divine Covenant, he will obtain the same most 
surely and readily, through the communion of the 
Body and Blood of the Lord. 

While the sacramental principle — that the 
physical is the body of the spiritual — is accepted 
on all hands, the efficacy of the Sacraments — 
what is conveyed by them — is a matter of keen 
controversy. It is indeed one of the misfortunes 

[264 I 



rhe SACRAMENTS 

of faith that the two Sacraments which were in-' 
tended by the Lord to unite Christian people 
together by uniting them to their Head, have 
become a cause of separation, and the Font of 
Baptism and the Holy Table of Communion are 
changed into battlefields where blood has been 
shed, and hearts have been broken. Could there 
be a more bitter satire upon our religion than 
one Christian persecuting another, because he 
differed from him over the mystery of Holy 
Communion, and two disciples quarrelling unto 
death who owned the same Lord and were trying 
to keep His last commandment, because the one 
took the words of our Lord's ordinance in the 
letter and the other in the spirit. One may 
however remember for his consolation that honest 
folk do not carry their arguments to such lengths, 
and will not make their doctrines matters of Hfe 
and death, unless they regard the matter in dis- 
pute to be of the last importance. Christians 
have surely counted the grace of God very 
precious when they were willing to die for the 
method of its communication, and they must 
have loved their Lord with all their heart, when 
they counted their life to be less than the form 
of His ordinances. If Christians sinned against 
charity, it was not because they loved men less 
but because they loved the Lord more, and if 
they seemed to ignore reason it was not because 
they had not used every power of thoug:ht, but 
because they desired that every thought should 
be brought into obedience to the mind of Christ. 
It has been a long and fierce debate, which is 
not yet settled, and which carries great issues 

[ 265 ] 



T:he DOCTRINES of GRACE 

with it, but one may be allowed to hope, not 
that the fire should die out, and believers come 
to regard the Sacraments as a thing- of no im- 
portance about which it were not worth while 
to differ, but rather that it should cease to smoke 
and turn into a pure clear flame of faith and love. 
And if the Sacrament of the Body and Blood has 
been the '' disputa " of the past, around it may 
yet gather, as in the Vatican Fresco, the saints of 
all ages and all schools, and the sign of the Lord's 
dying love unite men together on earth as it 
unites the redeemed in Heaven. 

It is pleasant also to remember how far the 
whole Church travels together in unity and holds 
the same doctrine regarding the Sacraments. 
Every Christian believes that the grace of which 
the Sacraments are in some sense the channel, 
comes alone from our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, and that the grace dwells in Him as the 
Head of the Church and the Saviour of the race. 
That the Sacraments are intended to minister 
that grace to His people as they have need of it, 
afflicted by the corruption of human nature, con- 
tending daily with temptations, requiring strength 
for ordinary duty and desiring to be changed into 
the likeness of the Lord. That the Sacraments 
can only convey this grace in full measure and 
without injury when the recipient is in spiritual 
fellowship with his Lord. That the Sacraments 
are an obligation laid upon the heart and con- 
science of Christian people so that every branch 
of the Church (with the exception of a few mystics 
such as the Society of Friends, who faithfully 
keep in the spirit what they do not observe in 

[266] 



The SACRAMENTS 

the letter) is careful to observe Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper. Is it too much therefore to say 
that in the essence of Sacramental truth the 
Church of Christ through all her provinces has 
one mind, and that if v^e are agreed that in the 
Sacraments we are cleansed by the Blood and 
reinforced by the Body of Jesus Christ, it is of 
secondary importance, what is the exact method 
of the conveyance, or the limits of the grace con- 
veyed. 

When we approach the actual efficacy of the 
Sacraments and inquire what practical value 
they have for the person who receives them, for 
the Church and also for the world, there is even 
here entire agreement up to a certain point, and 
more stress might be laid upon the truth wherein 
we agree, even though we must acknowledge 
the truth wherein we differ. The Sacraments 
we all hold are a picture of the Divine Grace, 
wherein we are taught by a sensible parable, the 
love of God and the reality of Christ's Sacrifice. 
They are according to the express wish of Christ 
a memorial of Himself, wherein we are reminded 
of His faithfulness unto death, and His devotion 
to the flock committed to His charge. They are 
a prophecy that He Who came once to die for 
our sins will come again for our perfect salvation 
when the day shall break and the shadows flee 
away. They are an open confession of faith in 
Christ Who has died and risen again, and Who is 
now Lord at the right hand of God the Father. 
They are a bond of union between Christian 
disciples, who, coming from many homes and 
being of many kinds, are welded into one at the 

[267] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

Holy Table, and in eating the Lord's Body, 
become themselves one Bread. And they are 
a declaration of the Gospel, preaching as they 
do unto all men the Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, before whom Christ is set forth crucified. 

As Christians behold the Sacraments and 
especially as they receive the Sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper they are reminded after a very, 
lively fashion of the whole truth of the Gospel and 
the love of their Lord, as well as of their own sin 
and shortcomings, and thereby they are moved to 
new faith and devotion, they are filled with new 
strength and hope. For this end it matters 
nothing whether they receive the Sacrament as 
the Mass at a Roman altar or take it as the 
Communion from the table of a Scots Kirk; 
both Roman and Scot are quickened unto hoh- 
ness, by the remembrance of *' Him Who loved 
us and gave Himself for us.'' 

Christians who hold that doctrine of the Sacra- 
ment, which incorrectly but conveniently goes by 
the name of Zwingli, for indeed this Swiss 
Reformer held a higher view, will not grant that 
the Sacraments are any more than a beautiful 
and moving symbol, but those who belong to the 
school of Calvin are apt to consider this an in- 
adequate and poverty-stricken statement of the 
truth. With the words before them wherein the 
Lord declares the Bread and Wine to be in some 
sense His Body and Blood and the discourse at 
Capernaum wherein He insisted that His disciples 
must eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, Calvin 
and his followers have concluded that the Sacra- 
ments besides being most excellent and convinc- 

[268] 



rhe SACRAMENTS 

ing signs of the Grace of Christ, are also a means 
whereby that Grace is conveyed directly and truly 
to the believer's soul. Any doctrine less than 
this would not be worthy of the Sacramental 
mysteries, and would not properly express the 
experience of the Church, for Christ surely went 
beyond a symbol in the words and acts of the 
Upper Room, and a symbol can never be to the 
soul, what the Sacrament has been to believing 
communicants since the day Christ rose from the 
dead and went to the right hand of the Father. 
While Calvin and all with him deny the real 
presence in the Roman sense, they hold firmly 
a presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in 
their spiritual substance, and experimental power, 
and to vindicate this position, both against those 
who deny that the Sacrament is anything more 
than a sign, and those who insist upon the phys- 
ical and actual presence of the Body and Blood 
of Christ I quote the statement of Calvin in his 
Institutes. " We conclude that pure souls are 
fed by the flesh and blood of Christ, just as our 
corporal life is preserved by bread and wine. For 
the analogy of the signs would not hold, if our 
souls did not find their aliment in Christ, which, 
however, cannot be the case unless Christ truly 
coalesce into one with us, and support us through 
the use of His flesh and blood. It may seem 
incredible indeed that the flesh of Christ should 
reach us from such an immense local distance, so 
as to become our food. But we must remember 
how far the power of His Holy Spirit transcends 
all our senses, and what folly it must be even to 
think of reducing His immensity to our measure. 

[269] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

Let faith then embrace what the understanding 
cannot grasp, namely, that the spirit truly unites 
things which are totally separated. Now this 
sacred communication of his flesh and blood by 
which Christ transfuses His life into us, just as 
if He penetrated our bones and marrow, He 
testifies and seals in the Holy Supper; not by 
the exhibition of a vain and empty sign, but 
by putting forth such an energy of His spirit 
as fulfils what He promises." And the same 
doctrine has been stated in the Scots confession 
of 1560, which runs "We confess that believers 
in the right use of the Lord's Supper thus eat 
the Body and drink the Blood of Jesus Christ, 
and we firmly believe that He dwells in them 
and they in Him, nay, that they thus become 
flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones. For as 
the eternal Deity gives life and immortality to 
the flesh of Christ, so also his flesh and blood, 
when eaten and drunk by us, confer on us the 
same prerogatives." The excellence of this doc- 
trine lies in its profound sense of the power 
which works through the Sacrament, and its 
success in reconciling the experience of the soul 
with the words of Jesus, while it lays no insuper- 
able burden upon reason, nor exposes a spiritual 
ordinance of Christ to the charge of materialism. 
It is not the least recommendation of this view 
that it makes the efificacy of the Sacrament 
depend upon the operation of the Holy Spirit. 
As Christ was born by the power of the Holy 
Ghost, and the union between the Deity and the 
Humanity is sustained by the same spirit, so it 
is by his quickening power that the Bread and 

[270] 



ne SACRAMENTS 

Wine are, if we may so say, charged with the 
life of Christ's Body and Blood and without the 
presence of the Holy Spirit Christ were not in 
the Sacrament, as without the same presence He 
would not be in the Church. As Christ is in 
the midst of the Church by His Spirit, so is He 
by the same spirit in the elements of the Sacra- 
ments, whether the Water of Baptism or the 
Bread and Wine of the Lord's Supper. And as 
He Cometh into any one's soul who opens the 
door in the preaching of the word, or in private 
meditation, so in the Sacrament He openeth the 
door Himself and receiveth His disciples into 
His heart. It is true that we can receive nothing 
more in the Sacrament than we do in the Word, 
for what more can be given us and what more 
can we desire than Christ Himself. But it is 
also true that Christ cometh in the Sacraments, 
in a more intimate and satisfying fashion, sealing 
our faith and with a sensible sign taking posses- 
sion of our soul. And the power by which He 
acts is the Holy Ghost. 

This view is also commended by the fact that 
it makes the efficacy of the Sacraments depend 
not only on the presence of the Holy Ghost, but 
also on the faith of the communicant, so that the 
Spirit in the Sacrament meets the Spirit in the 
soul. As every blessing of the Gospel is depend- 
ent upon faith and he only can receive anything 
from the Lord who believes upon Him, so it is 
incredible, and seems indeed profane that one 
who is a stranger to the Lord and a hater of His 
Law should receive anything except condemna- 
tion in the Sacramicnt. Unto him who believeth 

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rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the Water of Baptism is both the sign and seal of 
regeneration, but to him who beUeveth not it is 
only a reproach representing that Blood of Christ 
which is not cleansing him, that union to the 
Lord Whom he is refusing. Unto him who 
comes to the Lord's Table with a believing heart 
the Bread and Wine in the moments of their re- 
ception are the sign and seal of forgiveness and 
grace, but unto Judas they can only be the 
revelation of his sin and the means of his judg- 
ment. Apart from the Holy Ghost quickening 
the material of the Sacrament till it be inhabited 
by the person of the Lord, and quickening the 
deadness of our souls, till they be moved unto 
faith and love, there is no virtue in any Sacra- 
ment, they are vain and empty rites. Where- 
fore no less in the Lord's Supper than in Bap- 
tism should the Christian beseech the power of 
the Holy Ghost that whatsoever is signified be 
performed; that the infant presented unto the 
Lord may receive from Him there and then the 
blessing of everlasting life, and the Communi- 
cant who in his infancy was made a member of 
the Lord's Body be fed amid his labors and his 
trials with the Bread of Life. 

Amid the pressure and the tyranny of the 
things which are seen the Sacraments witness to 
the power of the spiritual world, and its final 
triumph. They remind us that whoso will save 
his life shall lose it, but that he who loseth his 
life for Christ's sake, shall find it again. That 
Christ did not die in vain upon the Cross, but 
that by death He vanquished sin and this present 
world. That He is not dead, but is alive with a 

[272] 



The SACRAMENTS 

power which reaches through heaven and through 
earth; That those who are united unto Him are 
Hfted above the power of death and are members 
of an Eternal Body. And that, while this world 
with its pride and its riches, and its lust and its 
glitter, must pass away, he who has set His 
affection upon the highest things which are at 
God's right hand where Christ sitteth must 
remain, " for the things which are seen are 
temporal, but the things which are not seen are 
eternal." And the two Sacraments will continue 
until the shadows pass into the substance, and 
this veil of physical things be removed, and the 
Lord to Whose Grace and Person they bear wit- 
ness, leadeth the Church which He has redeemed 
unto living fountains of water in the Heavenly 
places, and they who through the lowly elements 
of Bread and Wine have eaten the very flesh and 
drunk the very blood of the Lord, shall be called 
to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. 



[273 I 



The MERCY of FUTURE PUNISH- 
MENT 



XIV 

The MERCY of FUTURE PUNISH- 
MENT 

WHEN the average Christian speculates 
about the future, his eyes turn from, the 
right hand of the Throne where the sun 
is shining, to the left hand where the shadows 
are resting, and he is less concerned about the 
righteous who go into life eternal than about 
those who go away into everlasting punishment; 
and in this bias of thought he proves both the 
charity of his heart towards sinners, and the con- 
fidence of his faith about saints. He were surely 
not worthy to be called after Christ's name who 
should be willing that any person be condemned 
to endless misery, and he would be unworthy of 
the name of man who could think of his fellow 
creatures in a hopeless hell, without dismay./ 
About the condition of the righteous either in 
this world or in that which is to come, there can 
be no doubt. If a man lives godly in this pres- 
ent life, he may suffer loss and pain, but even 
now he is rewarded by the approval of his con- 
science and the respect of good men, which both 
are the voice of God. When he passes from this 
life into the unseen, it matters not where he lands 
or in what circumstances he be placed, he must 

[277] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

be welcome, and he must be blessed through all 
the vast regions of the other world. There is no 
place in the moral universe of God where it shall 
not be well with the godly man; and if we turn 
away when he enters through the gates into the 
City, and withdraw our mind from his life, it is 
because he is following the Lamb whithersoever 
He goeth and his joy is beyond imagination. 
We are not troubled about John, for he is with the 
Lord whom he loved; but we are very much 
troubled, and it were a shame if we were not, 
about Judas Iscariot. 

It is unfortunate that when we ask what is to 
become of the ungodly, we have been embarrassed 
by what may be called accretions upon the doc- 
trine of punishment which have been very 
offensive and which are quite without authority. 
The Church has taught from her pulpits in past 
ages that the impenitent sinner would be con- 
sumed, body and soul, in physical fire, and 
eloquent preachers enlarged for the highest ends 
upon the horrors of his fate; and so the Church 
by her servants made the salutary doctrine of 
punishment an offence to the reason, since it is 
evident that nobody could endure such fire with- 
out being destroyed, and that no soul could be 
touched with such fire at all; and an offence 
against the conscience, since it implies that God 
would exercise His miraculous power to secure 
the torture of His creatures. When our Lord 
spoke of fire, it can hardly be seriously contended 
that He meant that literal fire whose filthy 
smoke polluted the valley of Hinnom, but it is 
not therefore to be inferred that the reality would 

[278] 



The MERCY of FUTURE PUNISHMENT 

be less than the figure. A fire of remorse in the 
soul will surely be more bitter to bear than the 
burning of the flesh, for the one touches our feel- 
ings at the quick, the other only at their dullest. 
One would rather thrust his hand into the flame 
than strike the person whom he loves, and Peter, 
on the night of the denial, would have welcomed 
a Roman sword in his heart, if his flowing blood 
could have wiped out the words of his lips. The 
brief agony of fire, cruel though it might be for 
the moment, would be to many a man a welcome 
escape from vain and lasting regrets. 

It is also a slander against God to suggest that 
the punishment of the ungodly is an act of per- 
sonal revenge on His part in which He takes 
some kind of satisfaction and delight. As if He 
were an Almighty and malignant despot, whom 
some poor creature of His hands had ofifended 
and injured by his sinning, and who now exacted 
a thousandfold from him for all the wrong which 
he had done to his Creator ! As if God were a 
greater Moloch, casting men into a furnace as a 
sacrifice to His honor, instead of being the God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, like 
a father, pitieth His children, and spared not His 
own Son for our salvation. 

This doctrine has also been discredited by the 
once prevalent idea that a man's future would be 
decided by his creed, and that a human being 
might be consigned to unending suffering because 
he happened to be a Protestant and not a Roman, 
or a Unitarian and not a Trinitarian. No serious 
person will allow himself to belittle the value of 
correct thinking in matters of religion, or will 

[279] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

undervalue the connection between thought and 
action, but it were monstrous to suppose that an 
error in the process of reasoning on the most 
difficult and intricate of subjects — the mysteries 
of religion — should bring such a doom upon any 
man's head. We have really only one account of 
the last judgment, but it is sufficient because it 
came from the lips of Christ, and the distinction 
which Jesus makes between the sheep and the 
goats is that which we all make in the judgment 
of daily Hfe — the distinction, not of creed, but of 
character. If any man be sent to hell, he will find 
himself there, not on account of what he believed 
or did not beheve, but on account of what he was 
and what he did. 

Perhaps it is even more exasperating when 
the problem of punishment is mixed up with 
the problem of the heathen, and it is assumed 
that the nations which have lain outside the line 
of Jewish and Christian revelation will suffer 
doubly at the hands of God; first, because they 
knew not Christ, and second, because knowing 
not Christ they could not believe in Him, and 
therefore must suffer everlasting death. Surely 
the Judge of all the earth will do right, and will 
judge every man according to the light which he 
has had and the works which he has done. As 
a matter of fact the possibility of hell is a much 
more serious thing for a Christian who has lived 
in the fulness of the dispensation of the Holy 
Ghost than a man who has never heard the name 
of Christ, and there are many who have sat in 
Christian churches and taken the Sacrament of 
the Lord's Death who might well wish, both here 
[280] 



The MERCY of FUTURE PUNISHMENT 

and hereafter, to change places with Socrates and 
Marcus Aurelius. 

The punishment of sin in the world to come, 
as in this present world, when it is disentangled 
from external circumstances, is really an ethical 
question which must be settled, so far as it can 
be settled, by our moral reason, and the evidence 
may be gathered from four quarters. We ought 
to turn first of all to the principle of punishment 
and settle in our mind whether it is exhausted 
in the idea of reformation. Certainly a great and 
happy change has come over the national mind 
within the last century as to the best treatment 
of criminals. At the close of last century the 
death penalty, the last and most awful act of 
justice, was inflicted for the theft of a few 
shillings, or the stealing of a sheep, and public 
executions were orgies of profanity and brutaUty; 
the lash was constantly in use, and prisoners were 
treated worse than the brutes to whose condition 
they were being reduced. Amid this coarseness 
and mercilessness it is significant that people had 
no difficulty in believing in an endless hell, for 
indeed law had been making a hell on this side 
of the grave. With the gradual growth of 
humanity, as the Georgian period was replaced 
by the Victorian, criminal punishment came under 
the influence of nobler ideas, and it was felt that 
its chief end ought not to be to make a man 
sufifer for his sins, but rather to turn him from 
his sins, so that when he left prison he might 
not be more degraded than when he entered, 
but should rather be established in the habit of 
well-doing. It will, I think, be found that just 

[281] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

as society treats her criminals she beheves God 
will treat His, and that there has been a certain 
correspondence between what we consider the 
right kind of prison here and what we beUeve 
God will constitute as a prison hereafter. We 
may, indeed, assume that punishment can only 
be perfectly justified when it is arranged not to 
destroy but to save; and the method is most 
perfect which either hinders men from sinning, 
or, if they be overcome by sin, so deals with 
them that henceforward they desire to live godly 
and make every effort thereto. And that system 
of punishment could hardly be counted successful, 
which succeeded in making a sinner miserable, 
but had not done anything to deliver him from 
his sin. We ought, however, to ask ourselves 
whether we would be satisfied in our reason and 
conscience were retribution entirely eliminated 
from the idea of punishment, and whether we 
do not feel that is has its own just place. Sup- 
pose that some rufBan should deliberately and 
wantonly injure your child ; would it be enough 
in your judgment that he be placed under a course 
of prison treatment simply that he be lifted in 
future above such evil deeds ? Would not you 
demand that he be made to sufifer, even as he has 
made that child to sufifer; and would you consider 
yourself revengeful or inhuman in this demand ? 
Would not you consider any system of justice 
wanting in grit, and less than satisfactory to the 
conscience, which did not make a wilful sinner 
smart for the injury which he had done to in- 
nocent people, apart altogether from the question 
whether the smarting was to make him a better 

[282I 



rhe MERCY of FUTVRE PUNISHMENT 

man ? And the point is, if it be just that a man 
smart for what he has done in this Hfe, would 
it be unjust that he smart in the life to come, 
especially if he escaped punishment in this present 
world ? If there be a proper place for retribution 
in human justice, is it to be understood that there 
can be no place in Divine Justice ? 

Our second field of evidence is derived from 
the permanence of character. If we have learned 
to believe that a man's future is to be determined 
by character rather than by creed, then the laws 
of character have a great deal to say with regard 
to future punishment. And -if we have also 
learned to believe that character creates a man's 
environment, so that goodness and badness each 
make its own place, then character may be the 
builder of hell. A natural recoil from the 
tyranny of dogma should not carry us the length 
of denying the facts of life, and a Christian dis- 
like of human suffering should not lead us to 
ignore the distinction of right and wrong. If we 
do not know much about life beyond the grave, 
we know a good deal of life on this side of the 
grave; and while we may have a sentim.ent of 
horror against hell in the next world, we must 
not shut our eyes to the fact of hell in this world ; 
and if we discover that a man is capable of 
creating a place of horrible suffering in this life, 
we may not lay the blame of a place of suffering 
in the other world to the charge of God. Let us, 
at least, be real, and face the situation as we see 
it with our own eyes and without any need of an 
apocalypse. Here is a man who, through gross 
evil living and a savage temper, has made his 

[283] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

home a veritable Gehenna to his innocent wife 
aind children. He has become an unmitigated 
curse to them not only in their bodies, but also 
in their souls. The only rehef those miserables 
had, and the only opportunity of decent living, 
came when this husband and father was shut up 
in prison. This is not a singular case, nor is it 
a case confined to one class in society. When 
that man dies, it is a fortunate deliverance to his 
family, so that no one can pretend to regret his 
death, and many a philanthropic person had 
wished he had died sooner. What is going to 
be done with that man where he has gone? It 
is all very well to say that no person may be 
tortured, and we do not now believe that God will 
torture any person; but it is well to remember 
that that man spent his life torturing helpless 
people, and it is fair to ask whether he is going 
to be allowed to torture some more innocent 
people on the other side of the grave. He is 
an ugly fact, and cannot be dissolved in a flood 
of sentiment. When his wife, after a few years' 
rest, obtained by his death, passes into the next 
world, is she to be thrust again into his company, 
and is he to be allowed to repeat his former 
performances ? Surely the most sickly sentiment 
will not go that length. She used to have short 
periods of relief in this poorly governed world, 
when imperfect human justice kept the ruffian in 
gaol ; is she to be worse oflf with the perfect 
justice and supreme moral arrangements of the 
world to come ? If one allow that that man is 
to be kept apart, so that he do no more mis- 
chief, and that no persons sufifer hereafter as they 

[284] 



rhe MERCY of FUTURE PUNISHMENT 

have suffered here, then he has granted — more 
than that, has demanded — the existence of hell. 
For if that man be separated from well-living 
people, then he must be placed with evil-living 
people, and you have arrangement by character — 
John and Mary and Paul together, Judas and 
Caiaphas and Nero together. Does any one 
seriously believe that a confirmed ruffian is going 
to live in a state, wherever it may be or what- 
ever it may be, which was created to be the home 
of the Apostle John and the Apostle Paul, to be 
the home of Francis of Assisi and Thomas a 
Kempis, to be the home of his little child who 
had died in innocency, to be the home of all those 
clean-living people who glorified God in their 
day and generation, and who, having overcome 
the last enemy, are now with God ? Are we 
going to launch into this Christian home that 
ruffian who was a curse to his wife, so that she 
was congratulated when he died; who was a terror 
to his children; who was a byword in society for 
the injury he had done; who had not in him one 
single ground on which, when they went to bury 
him, they could respect him ? How does that 
bear on the question of future punishment ? 
That man is somewhere. Is it not most natural 
to believe that he is with his friends of the same 
color and complexion ? Would the wildest senti- 
ment propose to thrust the saint among the sin- 
ners, or to intrude the sinners among saints? 
Would the sinners desire to be in heaven, and 
would they be happy in heaven? May it not be 
that one man's heaven is another man's hell ? 
Whether that be so or not, a man's character 
inevitably settles his place. 

[285] 



rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

It may, of course, be suggested that character 
will change and that it does not follow that an 
evil liver here will be an evil liver there, and 
that we are entitled to hope that no man's doom 
is settled by this short period of mortal Hfe. 
This is not a hope which we desire to cherish 
about the saint, for we believe that his light will 
shine more and more to the perfect day, and 
that as he has begun so he will continue through 
all the ages; but if we can find any ground for 
our faith, we are certainly entitled to hope that 
the character of the sinner will be reversed. We 
must again, however, not be guided by our 
friendly wishes, but by our experience of Hfe. 
There is a time in youth and early manhood 
when character is still fluid, and can be evidently 
changed. The power of love, or some high call- 
ing, or the influence of a friend, or some startling 
event may profoundly affect the attitude of the 
mind and the trend of the affections and the goal 
of life. When we are young, we are most open 
to the appeals of the Evangel and the grace of 
God, to the example of godliness and the lessons 
of life. Before middle age the character has 
crystallized and settled into shape, and with every 
year of temptation unresisted and sins enjoyed 
the character hardens and becomes impervious. 
It is possible that a man of fifty may be con- 
verted and become as a Httle child ; it is not likely. 
It is possible that a sinner dying may be so re- 
generated in the course of an hour that he pass 
as a saint in thought and character into the 
heavenly kingdom; it is a rare case. Our 
wisdom in estimating life is not to argue from 

[286] 



The MERCY of FUTURE PUNISHMENT 

its brilliant exceptions, but to abide by its rule; 
and there is no rule of life more patent and more 
solemn than the fixity of character. Our bodies 
change in every part, our circumstances dissolve 
around us, our fellowships are broken and our 
beliefs depart, but character remains and grows 
and solidifies and reigns. And when we think 
of the future in its weal or in its woe, we must 
reckon with character. 

We are also entitled to seek for light on this 
awful question from the will of God as it is 
declared in holy Scripture; and there was a day 
when pious Christians firmly - believed that so 
many of our race would be consigned to hell 
by the Divine will. For if any one believes that 
one man is so predestinated unto life that he 
must attain thereto whatever he thinks, or does, 
or wills, then it follows that another man is 
practically predestinated to everlasting death 
whatever he thinks, or does, or wills. But there 
are few Christians to-day who could endure the 
thought that any one whom God has called into 
being by His providence, and for whom, as one 
of the world. He gave His Son, is destined 
without hope of escape to the place of darkness. 
This matter of the Divine will is not to be settled 
by a text here and a text there, but by the 
whole scope of revelation, from the days of the 
Patriarchs to the days of the Apostles; and the 
message of the Bible, when it is separated from 
local circumstances and imagery, is clear and full, 
and it comes to this, that it is the will of our 
Heavenly Father that not one of His creatures 
should perish. For their salvation He gave His 

[ 287 ] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

beloved Son, He sent the Holy Spirit, He 
compasses every man with the mercies of prov- 
idence and with the invitations of grace; so 
that, if any one is saved, it is by the grace of 
God; and if any one is lost, it will be in spite 
of the grace of God. So far as the will of God 
is concerned, there would be no hell, but only 
heaven, just as there would be no sin and only 
holiness. The will of God has had as much to 
• do with the creation of hell as with the origin of 
sin. It is a fact in the human constitution that 
God has given His creatures a certain measure of 
free will, allowing them a space for themselves 
wherein to breathe and move ; it is a fact of our 
own experience that we have said yes or no to the 
appeals of the Divine grace. It does not follow, 
therefore, that if any one suffer eternally this 
must be by the will of God, nor does it follow 
that there will be no punishment because the 
will of God is our salvation. It is the case, and 
here again no sentiment can blind us to the fact 
that in this present life one can resist the grace 
of God successfully and go on sinning in the 
very presence of the Cross. When punishment 
follows upon the sin in this world, we do not 
charge God with cruelty, we do not consider that 
this punishment is giving Him any pleasure; we 
regard it as inevitable, and we blame only the 
man. Suppose the man resist the will of God in 
the Hfe to come as he has resisted it in this life, 
what then? Will not punishment again dog the 
steps of sin, and can this be laid any more against 
the love of God in the future than it could be 
in the present? It is open to believe, and one 

[288] 



The MERCY of FUTURE PUNISHMENT 

desires to believe it, that in the long contest 
between this foolish human will and the wise and 
gracious will of God the will of man must in the 
end be conquered, and the will of God prevail, 
and the end of all evil, of good. Yet there is a 
shadow of this hope, and it is far from certain, 
for what influence can be imagined acting upon 
the soul in the other world which has not been 
affecting the soul in this world ? What weapons 
of love can God have in reserve if the invitations 
of Holy Scripture, and the commandments of the 
Lord, and the Cross of Calvary, and the pleading 
of the Holy Spirit have all- failed and been 
despised ? If we sin against the Father, behold, 
the Son maketh intercession for us; and if we 
refuse the Son, the Spirit maketh intercession 
within our own hearts, if haply we may yield. 
If we resist and overcome the Spirit so that 
He be driven in despair from our hearts, and 
have no more access unto us, then is there 
any fourth person in the Godhead to be our 
Saviour? 

There remains the evidence to be gathered 
from the teaching of our Master and His Apostles, 
and here again it is surely better to depend not 
upon single texts, but rather upon the whole 
trend of thought. Is it not pedantic to spend so 
much time over the exact meaning of a single 
Greek word, or over the construction of a sen- 
tence ? Nor can the matter be settled by the 
usages of Jewish theology, and the thought of 
Jesus's day. Our Master was not dependent 
upon philology when He wished to declare His 
mind, nor does He show the slightest trace of 

[ 289 ] 



The DOCTRINES of GRACE 

rabbinical teaching. He was not likely to hide 
Himself behind the ambiguity of an adjective, nor 
did it matter to Him what the Rabbis thought. 
He taught with authority, because He taught 
with certainty and with lucidity, and throughout 
His teaching He leaves the profound impression 
that He regarded the fate of the sinner with 
nothing less than horror. He compared the 
sinner's awful estate to the Valley of Hinnom 
with its foul, thick, unceasing smoke, and its 
festering, writhing, unspeakable corruption, and 
He besought men, with tears in His voice that 
they should make any sacrifice, to the cutting off 
of a right hand or the plucking out of a right eye, 
rather than enter into that fire. He sees the men 
of evil character depart from the left hand of the 
Throne with unspeakable sorrow, because they 
go by their own choice and their own nature 
into fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 
There is nothing. He declares, and no one deserv- 
ing to be feared in this world; there is only one 
to be feared anywhere, and that is He who can 
cast the soul into Gehenna. Can any one read 
the awestruck references of Jesus to the future of 
the sinner without trembhng and without a new 
sense of the fearful possibilities of the punish- 
ment which is entailed on sin ? No teacher was 
ever so charitable as Jesus, no Shepherd of men 
was ever so merciful, none has had such a heart 
of pity, none has made such sacrifices for man's 
help; none has suffered so much that we might 
not suffer; none has understood the depth of 
suffering like Jesus; and it must therefore 
remain a fact of the last solemnity that the most 
[290] 



The MERCY of FUTURE PUNISHMENT 

alarming references to the future of a sinner have 
fallen from the lips of Jesus. 

It is almost a paradox that St. Paul, on whom 
the Rabbis left their trace, should have a more 
hopeful outlook than his Master; but there is no 
question that in various passages St. Paul seems 
to point to the hope " that in the dispensation of 
the fulness of time, God might gather together 
in one all things in Christ, both which are in 
heaven and which are on earth," and '' that at 
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of 
things in heaven, and things in earth, and things 
under the earth, and that every tongue should 
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord unto the glory 
of God the Father," and that " As in Adam all 
die even so in Christ shall all be made alive." No 
doubt an exact exegesis may qualify and reduce 
the wider scope of such passages, but they allow 
us to believe that from time to time the great 
Apostle imagined a victory of Christ which would 
leave no rebel against his power, in the whole 
universe of God, and no creature of God, reason- 
ing or unreasoning, which would not do Him 
service. It is the hope we all would cherish, 
and which v/ould make glad our hearts; it is 
the consummation we believe God desires and 
which would be the crown of Christ's passion, the 

One far-off Divine event 
To which the whole creation moves. 

No one, however, can believe that St. Paul 
expected that such a restoration would ever be 
accomplished except through the repentance of 

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rhe DOCTRINES of GRACE 

the sinner and through the grace of God, for 
none has insisted more strongly on the insepar- 
able connection between sin, and guilt, and 
punishment, none has explained more clearly 
that the sinner can only be justified and sanctified 
in Christ Jesus. If there is to be a complete 
restoration, it must be in Christ Jesus, and so 
the old question rises like a ghost from its grave. 
What of those who of their own accord, and with 
deliberation have refused Christ ? What of those 
who by their own choice and will are cast away ? 
Ought we not to remember that the question 
of punishment depends upon the question of sin ? 
and are we not entitled to reason from the ar- 
rangements of this life to those of the life to 
come ? Does not punishment follow sin as efifect 
follows cause in this world, and is not this pun- 
ishment a sanction of righteousness and a safe- 
guard for righteous men ? Would this world 
be worth living in, or could human society stand 
for an hour, if wrongdoing had no penalties, and 
the man who did ill was treated the same as the 
man who did well? Is it not our complaint that 
the judicial machinery of human society is so 
imperfect that the righteous man does not receive 
his due recompense, and that the unrighteous 
man escapes his just punishment ? Have we 
not imagined that state of things where the 
evil doer would be sharply dealt with for the 
good of himself and every other person, and 
the innocent would be protected and blessed ? 
Were we not very indignant a few years ago 
when the monsters who perpetrated the Armenian 
atrocities were rewarded instead of being hanged, 

[292] 



The MERCY of FUTURE PUNISHMENT 

and when the victims had no escape except the 
grave ? and would it not have more firmly estab- 
lished our faith in Divine providence if by some 
means the guilty had been punished and the 
miserable had been delivered ? Had it been 
in one's power to have cast the miscreants who 
committed unspeakable outrages into some place 
of suffering, we had done so with a profound 
sense of righteousness; and had we been able 
to remove the unhappy people to a safe and 
pleasant land, where they would know terror no 
more, this we had also done with a profound 
sense of relief. Are we then- to suppose that 
the future life will be no improvement upon the 
present, but that for ever our moral sense will 
be insulted with the sight of unpunished wicked- 
ness and of wronged innocence ? Are we not 
bound to believe that where there is sin there 
must and ought to be suffering, and that among 
the mercies of God by which we are weaned from 
unrighteousness and held in the way of life ever- 
lasting, not the least is the punishment of sin both 
in this world and in that which is to come. 



The End 



t293l 



OCT 29 V -^0 



0^7i 



